 here it's almost the 4th of July and this is when we celebrate why America is number one the every other nation in the world to the best of my knowledge it depends upon you know shared racial religious ties you know people tied together by history and heritage but not the United States you can just come to the United States and you can immediately become American. Christopher Cordwell makes this point in his book The Age of Entitlement right Americans in recent years right we didn't used to boast about this but recent years Americans have been fond of boasting that unlike most nations where it is heritage history and race that bind people together United States is a place that one can belong to regardless of your background anyone can come here become American American number one number one right now there is a reason that almost all other nation states are not multi ethnic right there's a reason why most of those who have tried to become multi ethnic countries have failed back we don't have any examples in history to the best of my knowledge where you have a nation state that's built up by one particular people and then that people become swamped and most of the population comes from completely different people and there isn't you know massive turmoil and bloodshed so we don't have any kind of shared heritage history racial or religious ties anymore in the United States so our shared heritage is absent it's unrecognized right all the eggs of national cohesion are placed in the basket of the Constitution guys we got our problems but at least we still got the Constitution maybe the Constitution will hold it together but here's the paradox with the dawn of the civil rights era the US Constitution very thing that made it possible for this ethnically varied nation to live together has essentially been replaced by the civil rights constitution so what can hold us together i'm thinking maybe a fourth of july declaration welcome to craftery crafts plus history my prager you resources for educators and parents today is special because i've got friends with me will hello and amala hi all right you too do you have any idea what we're doing here no idea good today is a little bit different than a regular craftery because instead of a craft we're actually hosting a fourth of july declaration ceremony for you have you ever heard of a fourth of july declaration ceremony i haven't you haven't because it's something very unique to prager you this is a party that you can have at home with your family and friends it's a ton of fun and it's really special to do for our nation's birthday okay here's what you need iced tea salty pretzels strawberries blueberries whipped cream a small bell an american coin any american coin and a printed declaration of independence so this short ceremony teaches us the meaning of independence day and reminds us how lucky we all are to be americans we are lucky right yes we are very lucky okay are you two ready for all of this let's go let's go a great way to start this party is to remember that before america was a nation it was a dream it was a dream yes it began with the pilgrims in 1620 who fled europe so they could be i think they meant to say that before united states was a nation state it was a nation of a particular people right at the time of the declaration of independence americans were 85 percent from england right so united states of america was created by a particular people with a particular people in mind right they created the united states not for the world's refuse but for themselves and for their posterity free to practice their religion as they saw fit they built lives in a land with limitless opportunities about 150 years later americans were ready to break away from the old world and on july 4th 1776 our founding fathers took action and declared freedom from the tyranny of the king of england yes let's go now we cannot forget that thousands fought and died for the freedom and liberty we have now and that's where we are so wait did thousands and hundreds of thousands die for the freedom and liberty that we have now like the freedom to be trans and to have same-sex marriages or did they die for a particular people so in my flawed understanding of history right people fought for the united states and died for the united states to protect a particular people living in a particular land not for abstract values like freedom pop quiz amala why is america different from all other countries so in 1776 most countries were based on nationality religion ethnicity or geography and america was based wow how primitive is that man just imagine having a nation state based on shared heritage right i mean that's the way the united states was until the 1960s right by 1960s america was more cohesive than it had ever been before right we had higher social trust higher social cohesion than we've ever had before and then we very quickly blew it up with civil rights legislation but hey maybe we can get it all back together with radical love inclusion and constitution and do a fourth of july declaration ceremony and maybe this will overcome now our lack of racial religious historical and heritage ties on a set of ideas that's right wow so america is just based on a set of ideas i god i'm so primitive i thought america was created by a particular people in a particular time and place created for themselves and for their progeny which sounds kind of blood and soil nationalism to me but hey i want to get educated that's why i told you this is why we brought the friends because friends know great stuff especially you will yeah i think they died so that wealthy actors could dip gerbils into cocaine and let them run up their backsides i think that's why so many american soldiers fought and died what are those ideas that make america so special you can see them on every coin you have e pluribus unum liberty and in god we trust so think about your own family is what makes your family strong is it shared values do you have like shared slogans does that you know knit your family together right do you love each other because you have shared rituals because you have like shared allegiances to particular texts because you share political religious cultural beliefs is it shared ideology that knits your family extended family or community together or are you tied together by something more primitive such as uh blood ties shared history heritage yes liberty of course means that we're free to pursue our dreams and work hard to be as successful as we can in god we trust amala i'll let you take this one means that our rights are given to us by god that's right and no human can take away our rights and e pluribus unum will means from many one america is made up of all sorts of different cultures ethnicities religions but we all come together to make america what it is today yes and it is unique so are you ready for the treats yes it's been ready yes been ready okay all of these things here on our table things that you can put on your table symbolize america's declaration of independence and the revolutionary war that followed so let's start with a toast with our tea thank you thank you okay we drink our sweet iced tea to remember the boston tea party when patriots dumped british tea into the ocean instead of paying unfair taxes and they did this so that one day they could transition their gender and have same-sex marriages and stuff jubbles up their backside to king george cheers cheers everybody take a sip that was more than a sip will this good take it's all right it's a party pretzels now pretzels remember the suffering of the salty tears of soldiers during the heart so seriously do you think this would be more effective at knitting the united states together a nation of about 330 million people as opposed to shared racial religious ties shared ties of heritage and history which you think would be more powerful so then it's pretty good the one who came up with this fourth of july satyr right he was for you know massive immigration to the united states he doesn't believe in the importance of you know shared racial ties shared genetic ties he doesn't believe in the importance of blood he believes in values he believes that value is far more important than blood harsh winner at valley forge the army was of course led by george washington everybody take a bite see the salt the salty tears of the soldiers we gotta remember powerful and another sip of the tea gotta wash wash down the salt our bell now we ring a small bell to remember when our great liberty bell now in philadelphia rang to proclaim the surrender of king george's armies all right now the best part the part you two have been waiting for we eat strawberries and blueberries and whipped cream to celebrate our american flag now we know of course that the colors of our flag are red white and blue what does red stand for partiness and valor yes it means we're strong what does blue stand for justice and perseverance yes and white stands for purity okay guys go oh gosh this is what i'm gonna be doing tomorrow how about you man i really think this could help bring america back together again that's everything tastes like america america number one now we know that america is not perfect but our ideals opportunities and history of always wanting to become better are things we can all be proud of yes yes and we are proud to be americans of course of course we are so we've got one last thing to do sign our names on the copy of our declaration of independence ladies first amala okay gel that is a fantastic signature yeah is our fourth of july declaration ceremony but okay so compared to primitive ties of you know religion race history heritage i mean what do those traditional ties how do they compare with something like a fourth of july satyr man that's powerful well the the dalga problem guys is the left is destroying american identity and how do i know because uh denis prega told me so if americans don't embrace some basic moral principles as their culture the country is over because this country is not homogeneous like then mark or norway country is heterogeneous ethnically and racially and in every other way the human condition comes so it is the only way america can survive is if everybody assumes a strong american identity which the left is destroying and uh don't forget down on the lower right this is coming to you from the pain-free relief factor studio close to say and as a result you don't have america anymore from many we isn't that amazing that was the name i think of his column certainly this that was the that was the topic of his column wow guys if the left succeeds in destroying the american identity we will have nothing left denis tells us the only way america can survive i saw it early that uh i want you to know he saw it only right he was far seeing all right the wise great man saw it early he sees things that you don't see for example he knows that we're going through a civil war right now could it could it happen here could not see germany happened here denis prega's written the column recently it is happening here right we're practically building outfits in beveley hills as i speak what brings me zero satisfaction with me so i'm not i'm not bragging to you i saw it not bragging i'm only saying that i did see it early because i think clearly and i have a strong moral geiger counter and whenever it comes near the left pulsates people want to say oh look you know i don't like either extreme this is this is the lazy way of not confronting evil well it's on both sides really and when was the last violent demonstration on the right so then people talk about the oklahoma city talk you have individuals who do evil with every every single doctrine on earth but but as a movement tell me when the last right wing conservative violent demonstration took place when the tea party demonstrated in uh january 6 but in fairness to prega this was recorded july 2nd 2020 large numbers against barack obama's policies it cleaned up the after itself remember that they left the grounds clean did you see how these thugs who made the chas buzz flues did you see how they left it the garbage heap these are the scum of the earth and if you can't say that it's because you're a coward people don't stare at evil it's another one of my biggest views about life remember i've always said it's the evil is not dark evil is so bright people can't stare it in the face i wrote a column years ago the left fight statues the right fights evil on the left there's greater hostility to george washington than to the iranian regime okay that give you an idea of how morally sick the left is is that really true uh i really haven't encountered that many leftists who are actively hostile towards george washington i mean i'm sure there are some and there are some who are actively hostile towards the iranian regime but most leftists like most rightists they have other priorities than uh some bloke from 270 years ago and a regime in iran i don't know what stops people from from the realization i don't i really don't uh well i don't fully i do partially the the intimidation of the left the indoctrination is so is so acute that the fear oh my god i can't side with with the right that's what it is about let alone with donald trump okay so let's get some some background on this like where's it coming from so then it's pretty good he does not believe in leaders guys he's just a humble servant of the truth he has no interest in power he is no interest in being a leader he said on the radio june 28 2011 about his time running the brand eyes by dean institute from 1977 to 1983 then i said individuals make and break the world you know how many organizations i've seen that were great because its leader was great and then the leader died or retired and the place became nothing it just drove it up and died wait what sorry i got it wrong dennis but he's you know leaders are vitally vitally important leaders are everything i know of what i speak on a personal level right because when when dennis prager left brand eyes by dean dennis says the leader leaves and the people thought that what was great about the institution was its policies its methodologies doesn't matter who led it well when dennis left apparently when the good leaders leave the methodologies are useless right leaders are everything guys methodologies policies institutions nothing without great leaders like dennis prager but on the other hand march 23 2010 dennis said leaders don't make america americans make america i don't want leaders to shape america god was entirely opposed to having a king the israelites asked for a king instead he just wanted the prophets to tell people what is right and wrong and let them lead their own lives i don't want leaders i have a leader god we lead ourselves in america the very notion that leaders will lead us is left wing so dennis does not believe in leaders but dennis really strongly believes in leaders so which is it like trying to reconcile these so it's kind of hard to avoid thinking that dennis loves leadership when leadership allows him to assert himself above others and dennis does not like leadership when it allows others to assert themselves above him so with almost all pundits they say completely contradictory things frequently you have to look for the magic decoder ring for understanding pundits and gurus and the magic decoder ring is look for what's in their self-interest so they will promote leadership if they see an opportunity for leadership for them they will oppose leadership if it might lead to others having more than what they've got all comes down to self-interest that's the magic decoder ring for understanding punditry so this dennis preger notion that it is the left rather than the right who valorizes leaders is once again the opposite of reality so i've been reading this terrific 2015 book key concepts in politics and international relations and professor andrew he would has an entry about leadership so generally speaking the principal supporters for the power and importance of leadership have come from the political right why because the right is strongly influenced by a general belief in natural inequality right different people have different guests that's a right-wing belief we're more at ease with hierarchy and the right has a broadly pessimistic view of human nature and of the masses so in its extreme form this is reflecting the fascist leader principle which holds there is a single supreme leader who alone is capable of leading the masses to their destiny so the right often extols virtues of leadership such as great leader mobilizes and inspires people who would otherwise be inert and directionless this is just how dennis preger sees himself particularly with his pitch for the fourth of july satyr a great leader promotes unity and encourages members of a group to pull in the same directions what dennis preger does and strengthens organizations by establishing a hierarchy of responsibilities and roles the people on the left usually warn that leaders cannot be trusted and people on the left usually treat leadership as a basic threat to equality and justice so why is dennis preger you know so into a fourth of july satyr but so opposed to ethnic you know racial ties is the basis for a nation state so back in 1995 in a lecture on the book of exodus dennis said the jewish dream is that world not be based on blood ties which is kind of weird because judieism is a tribe it is strongly strongly based on blood ties all right and you can have a tribe that's strongly based on blood ties that also in allows in you know a few members from the outside right that judieism allows in a few converse does not contradict that this is primarily a tribe that is united by blood ties but denis says it is the only dream that will save humanity given the horrors of blood blood beliefs are the greatest source of cruelty in history yes blood beliefs are also the greatest source of kindness in history if you're not my blood you're not valuable yeah that's basically how the world works and it is a source of tremendous kindness and a source of tremendous cruelty so all the evils dennis preger as describes as the belief in blood is simply the flip side of genetic altruism when parents prefer their own children to other people's children they are preferring their own blood when people love they simultaneously hate that which threatens what they love and even dennis recognizes this in his commentary on the book of genesis he says every nation has a derogatory way of referring to other nations yes so does genetic similarity predict closer ties than less genetic similarity the evidence is clear it is overwhelmingly right so look at what happens to adopted children as opposed to biological children adopted children much more at risk of violence and abuse than biological children so adopt these were more likely than genetic offspring to receive public assistance to get divorced to be arrested to complete fewer years of schooling to require professional treatment for mental health alcohol and drug issues compared to genetic children american adoptees of a higher overall risk of contact with mental health professionals specifically for eating disorders learning disabilities personality disorders attention deficit hyperactivity disorder they have lower achievement more problems in school they're more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol they're more likely to fight with or lighter parents compared to genetic children so dennis preger advocates the proposition nation country united by shared beliefs as well as the proposition family parents and children united by shared beliefs and shared rituals like the fourth of july saturday he wrote as a father my purpose is not to pass on my seed but to pass on my values so dennis also does not believe that the family is a particularly big deal when compared to the ultra importance of the individual which is a very liberal perspective so in a 2005 lecture on deuteronomy chapter 24 verse 5 denis said traditional life in europe became you were defined by your family but that's not the way it ought to be you were defined by you not by your family people think family is a big deal it's not it's a big deal well who are you right so denis says the individual far more important than the family so i think this is a completely wrong belief right so denis preger and the classical liberal perspective coming from john lach and company is that we are primarily individuals rather members of families now john mirsham it wrote about this delusion in his 2018 book the great delusion liberal dreams and international realities says my view is that we are profoundly social beings from the start to the finish of our lives that individualism is of secondary importance yes we are not primarily individuals with inalienable rights we are primarily members of a nation an extended family a tribe and whatever rights we are afforded would depend upon the circumstances of the tribe where the nation finds itself in so liberalism right downplays the social nature of human beings so the point of almost ignoring it treating people largely as atomistic actors we just out there is preger trees people which is very opposite of a traditional perspective including the traditional jewish perspective which sees individuals as secondary to to the family so political liberalism is an ideology that is individualistic at its core and assigns great importance to the concept of inalienable rights his concern for inalienable rights is the basis for liberalism's universalism that everyone on the planet has the same inherent set of rights and this is what motivates liberal states to pursue ambitious foreign policies such as invading afghanistan and 2001 and iraq in 2003 to nation build and bring democracy and gay rights to the middle east so public and scholarly and media discourse about liberalism since world war two places enormous emphasis on human rights right human rights have come to define the most elevated aspirations of both social movements of political entity state and interstate they evoke hope and provoke action why has there been such enormous enthusiasm for human rights starting in the 1970s because leftists grew disillusioned with socialism and communism they grew disillusioned with real world politics they wanted an illusion that they could embrace not that you can really have human rights outside of a state right a state can afford rights to its citizens that's about the extent of human rights but pursuit of human rights is is a narcotic it's an illusion it's an intoxicating dream for leftists to become disillusioned with real world politics let me show my notes we do not operate as lone walls like i get excited when i read a great idea or have a great experience largely because i can then talk about it with someone or talk about it with a group of people because i'm connected to people who i love and who love me right we we do not operate as lone walls right we are born into families to social groups to tribes to societies to nations that shape our identities well before we can ever assert our individualism right we if we're halfway normal we will develop very strong attachments to our family to our group to our tribe and we will usually be willing to make great sacrifice for members of our in group right we are tribal at our core we are far more tribal than we're individualist the main reason for our social social nature is the best way for an individual to survive is to be embedded in a family in a tribe in an extended family in a nation in a society and to cooperate with fellow members of your in group rather than to act alone now reason gets a very elevated ranking but it's about the least important of the three ways that we determine our preferences including our moral and political and cultural preferences right reason is far less important than socialization which we get from our families extended families our tribe and our community from our in group right the main reason socialization matters so much is that we as human beings have a long childhood in which we are normally protected and nurtured by our families and our extended families and our communities right and by our surrounding society and we are almost always exposed to intense socialization now not me I was I was kidnapped by by dingos and I was just you know raised in the outback but normal people are raised by families right we begin to develop our critical faculties you know in our teens and 20s right we're not really equipped to think for ourselves until well into our 20s right by the time we reach the point where we can reason right family society community have already imposed such an enormous value infusion on us that to think that our reasoning can outdo our socialization is absurd right individual is also born with innate sentiments and proclivities that strongly influence how he perceives thinks and experiences the world around him so people have very limited choice in formulating a moral code because so much of their thinking about right and wrong comes from inborn attitudes and socialization so I believe John Mirsheimer is right here I believe that Dennis Prager is just another guru spouting pseudo profound nonsense James Koch Patrick argues nor can any real family hold together on the ground of ideology we love our parents and our children because they are ours not because we agree with their views of the Constitution so what best predicts a child's educational attainment along with its future income and family stability blood or home times a London reporter nature not nurture is the main determinant of how well children perform at school and university so I read this on Lawrence Oster's side about Dennis Prager he has a bizarre anti biology approach to all ethical matters he considers racism the most grievous human sin throughout history and so anything at all that even acknowledges race as a reality is offensive to him there's a part of the baby Richard episode during the 1990s where an adopted child who lived with his new parents from near infancy to around age four was given back to his biological father so Dennis Prager describes the danger in thinking that blood is important but he takes his view to such an extreme say that blood is completely meaningless he says many times if the hospital mistakenly gave him another person's baby and he kept that child for a day he would not want to bring it back to switch it for his biological child right for every sane and decent person there's a threshold of time after which the emotional connection overrides biology but one day and so this opposition to the slightest hint the blood descent genetics matters in the definition of a people particularly the Jewish people right is absurd right rejecting the racial or ethnic biological genetic component of Judaism is is absurd right your your overall life chances can basically predict be predicted from your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents right the individual doesn't make that big of a difference in his life outcome compared to what is genetically transmitted to him and the social competence that he learns growing up to depend and stay in America but on this special day we find our beloved country more divided and then united here to talk about the world ahead and much more about the Dennis Prager show and founder of Prager University Dennis Prager thanks so much for being here Dennis and happy 4th of July which I fear means something different to us than it does to a lot of other people but I want to talk about racism and I want to talk about the theme and the undercurrent of all the protests and the burning and the looting and the toppling of statues and that is that America is starting to recognize how racist she really is your thoughts I wrote a piece a number of years ago that the greatest libel since the blood libel against the Jews in the middle ages where Jews were accused of using Christian kids bloods to bake matzah for Passover that was the great blood libel the second biggest libel that I am aware of on a national level is that the United States is a racist country that is how profound the lie it is and the reason it is so serious is now seen in the streets it is seen in the lives of vast numbers of white and black and other kids in this country who believe this grand lie there are so many obvious ways to prove how little racist this country is let me give you just a quick review first of all there are so many races there are so many race hulks of us wants to go on a dorm room of a noose in somebody's room of a gang rape against a black woman all of them turn out to be hulkses so I have a question why are there so many or just a small let obviously the latest one with NASCAR why are there so many hulkses if there's so much real racism I'll bet you there wasn't one anti-semitic hulks in Germany in the 1930s you think any Jew made up an anti-semitic incident of course not because they were so much real anti-semitism you make up stuff when the real stuff doesn't exist how about this two million black Africans black Africans I'm not even talking about north africans who were Arab black sub-saharan Africans have moved to the united states in the last 50 years been incredibly successful one of the most successful immigrant groups why would black Africans move to a country that is racist are they stupid are they suicidal okay so in the 1960s we got the civil rights revolution and it was understood completely differently by american whites as opposed to american blacks so for whites the civil rights revolution was a really nice thing that the majority population was doing for its minority population but blacks understood civil rights completely differently they understood white people the majority population passing civil rights legislation as an admission that they were guilty and talk of reparations all right white people think that by discussing reparations and possibly you know giving reparations to to american blacks that that would just be a really nice thing to do but it would just be more evidence to blacks that white people are guilty so for white people the majority population they thought by extending civil rights in the 1960s that they were affirming the moral principles of the u.s constitution you know extending its principles to the american south where they'd never really been applied as christopher cordwell writing in the age of entitlement but he said black people are the most zealous among the civil rights activists of all races so whites is having entered a guilty plea in the court of history right that's how it's perceived by the most zealous civil rights activists that by passing civil rights legislation the majority population is entering a guilty plea in the court of history and thus you know completely repudiates the moral posturing on which the good name and good conscience of their constitutional republic had rested essentially you are replacing the historical constitution of the united states with a new constitution the civil rights constitution and so when people talk about passing reparations for american blacks the majority population think oh this is just a really nice generous thing to do but the zealous activists of all races along with american blacks by and large will see this as just further evidence of whites entering a guilty plea in the court of history but what about france right france maybe just needs more love and inclusion and and more emphasis on the constitution that's what the financial times has to say here come on right france needs a new social mission by the editorial board the senseless rioting that has brought mayhem to towns and cities across france shows signs of abating although it could easily flare up again the violence was sparked by the shooting dead by a policeman of a 17-year-old boy nal mertzuk as he accelerated away from a police check the flames spread with alarming speed fanned by social media and shone an unforgiving light on deep-seated social tensions and political polarization these problems require a comprehensive and sustained response from president immanuel macron and his government frances impoverished ethnically diverse urban neighborhoods will otherwise remain a powder keg prone to detonation macron deserves some credit for how he handled this crisis early on he showed empathy for the dead youth describing his death as inexcusable and inexplicable the president's opponents and police unions decried these terms as a violation of the presumption of innocence and a betrayal of the police but it was imperative to try to douse the fire the government including hardline interior minister jirard del manin have followed the president's lead and avoided inflammatory language macron also resisted demands to impose a state of emergency which could have made things worse while mobilizing vast police resources to contain the unrest macron's jubiterian approach to power over six years has done much to inflame public opinion but it is his opponents on the right far right and far left who have exploited this crisis to fight their culture wars far left leader john luke melanchon refused to appeal for order showing it is not just one extreme that endangers the republic the victims family frances football team and other celebrities showed more responsibility by pleading for calm no grievance can justify a rampaging mob engaged in senseless violence ramming a burning car into the home of a district mayor south of paris was pure criminality looters must face justice parents share responsibility for allowing through seeking teenagers to join in but france must address the causes of the sense of injustice and abandonment by the state in many communities which are partly of macrons making fran okay so france must address the root causes guys because apparently there are substantial numbers of people in france who feel that the government is unfair well guess what life is unfair the government is going to be inevitably be unfair everywhere so just as america's race problems are not unique to america they reproduce everywhere that you get those same racial combinations everywhere in the world so too france's race problems are reproduced all over the world they have absolutely nothing uniquely to do with france all right so people who are prone to committing astronomical rates of crime and destruction in france similar people all right are also committing astronomical rates of crime and destruction in the united states in the united kingdom in australia in other parts of the world so this idea that there's something you know uniquely horrible about you know what's going on in france and if they're just knowing had more more inclusion just just created more opportunities is absurd only country where police brutality against black or ethnic minority men has sparked major unrest okay so when the united states was testing out uh nuclear weapons in the mid 1940s they did that near moorman communities why did they test out nuclear weapons near moorman communities because they knew that moorman communities were incredibly patriotic and would not make loud complaints about the the downsides of having you know nuclear weapons exploded next door to their community so different people react to provocations differently so the people who've reacted in a criminal way to provocations in france right same type of people react in a criminal way frequently to provocations in australia or in the united kingdom or in the us all right this really has nothing to do with uh you know france not doing enough affirmative action i mean france and the united states have both tried to take on you know ideological approaches to nation building hey guys we got these shared values in common you know surely that that would be enough to to bring us together but that's not how the world works and i'm coming back here a thousand times if i have to to point out that's not how the world works i win they lose the us and uk have witnessed the same but france is singularly reluctant to face up to its policing problems violent tactics during protests poor training systemic racial discrimination and far right sympathies police rules on using firearms relaxed in 2017 shall discrimination and macrons reluctance to tackle these issues for fear of looking soft on law and order has backfired since it is the far right that has most to gain from further flare-ups macron and the french political elite have also failed to give proper attention and resources to the poverty crime racial discrimination and educational underperformance that still conveyed the ban there are no simple solutions but we don't know the root causes of crime right there there are no effective you know proven methods for reducing crime by addressing root causes we do have a very effective method for reducing crime and that is to lock up super predators right you lock people up who do bad things you reduce crime okay you get to choose your crime rates by how rigorous you are in locking up people who do bad things right that unequivocally empirically reproduces itself again and again and again lock up bad people doing bad things you will slash crime rates and so this this financial times op-ed is absurd right you know france must address the root causes of these riots we don't know root causes for crime we we don't have a strong empirical basis for that we can notice that certain groups commit astronomical rates of crime wherever they are in the world so it must not be the environment or policing or the schools or all these external factors when everywhere these groups go they commit astronomical rates of murder and mayhem prance must address the causes of the sense of injustice and abandonment by the state in many communities well every individual every community can manufacture a sense of injustice and abandonment right you can manufacture a gigantic sense of injustice and abandonment and victimization by the state by your family by your community right that's to be human is to have some you know sense of victimization right that's nothing unique to these groups that are committing the mayhem and the rioting prance is not the only country where police brutality against black or ethnic minority men has sparked major unrest yeah well a lot more white men are the victims of police brutality in the united states and yet by and large white people don't rise up and commit astronomical rates of crime so i don't think purported police brutality really has much to do with it prance is singularly reluctant to face up to his policing problems well if the groups who are rioting and murdering and committing mayhem in france have astronomical rates of crime and murder everywhere they go in the world it really doesn't have much to do with prance's policing doesn't really have much to do with prance's police's violent tactics during protests or their lack of training or systemic racial discrimination or their far right sympathies or police rules and using firearms relaxed in 2017 right the groups that are rioting and murdering and committing mayhem in france right now are doing the same thing when they have the opportunity in the united kingdom and in the united states so there's nothing unique here about uh prance's reluctance to tackle root issues right there's nothing unique about america's race problems right everywhere in the world with you know america the races that constitute america have similar problems right absolutely nothing unique about america's race problems the races that uh combust in their crime and mayhem in the united states do the same thing wherever they are in the world when given the opportunity but according to you know the financial times immanuel macron and the french political elite have failed to give proper attention resources to the poverty crime racial discrimination educational underperformance that pervade these french hellholes well there's no external answer for the low quality of life in some of these french ethnic communities either these various ethnic communities in france the united kingdom australia the united states that pick themselves up and start lowering the amount of murder and torture and rape they commit or they will continue to create for themselves just absolutely horrific communities right the answer is not outside of these communities at the answer comes from inside these communities that's the that's the only answer but maybe we just need a fourth of july sata plate is a lovely rabbi three months ago i sat in the same seat with the same sata plate as the rabbis and i created videos for our congregation for Passover now i am holding the sata plate again very purposefully as it is almost july fourth and i'm thinking of an incredible article written three years ago in 2017 on july second by alan verdict and aliza buyard who suggested that what we need for Passover excuse me what we need for the fourth of july is like Passover a satir you can read the entirety of their article which i think is very meaningful and in fact i'll be speaking more about it tomorrow night friday night july third 2020 as i expand upon their suggestion but at this moment i want to suggest that we ask each of ourselves what is it about Passover that we can take with us to the fourth of july we enjoy getting together but we also have some serious conversations about our role and the responsibility of making freedom realized in our country and also perhaps what are the symbols that we could put on a proverbial satir plate for the fourth of july to symbolize what it is that we yearn for once again in our country this is an unusual time vis-a-vis coronavirus but it's not necessarily unfortunately an unusual okay this was recorded uh july second of 2020 here's another wonderful example of a fourth for coming today thank you everybody for coming today and uh we're doing something different the fourth of july usually is associated with being in a park eating hot dogs and um fireworks but fireworks we can still do after we finish here yeah that looks awesome what are your cards today this is my card this is a few more are they your details it's great to see you thanks for coming to our fourth of july we'll see you today everybody's gonna represent one of the signers to the declaration there were 56 of them and so you're each gonna you're gonna get a name tag so you need to put the name tag on William William you're yeah you're William and you're Samuel Huntington and you're both from Connecticut okay so I put your name tag on and then we're gonna give you you're gonna each have one of these bio cards and on the bio cards there's a few sentences about each one of you okay this is your bio card and you notice that you're Samuel Huntington and you're from Connecticut and this is where you are in the famous painting it shows a little red arrow and it describes where you are in the painting hello and what we're gonna do during the parties you can go up to anybody at the party and like if you looked at him and you'd say hey William tell me a little bit about yourself and then he would share a couple sentences about him and then you do the same thing and then you can ask him well who are you really and you mean a new friend okay okay and let me I want to show you where you are in the famous picture and where your signatures are in the declaration so we're gonna walk over here okay so those are nice attempts and I think they'll really be that effective I think a far more effective approach would be to anathematize diversity all right celebrating diversity is celebrating that we have nothing in common right the more diverse the less in common we have diversity effectively means anti-white so I think we should stop celebrating diversity and instead start celebrating things that we have in common and these were examples of you know celebrating things that we have in common but perhaps don't make the majority European Christian population feel like it's going to be overwhelmed that's not a good idea because we don't know you know how people will react we don't have any examples in history of a majority population that's created their own nation state and then become overwhelmed by outsiders and it wasn't accompanied by a tremendous turmoil and and bloodshed so on the other hand you know people on the dissident right have usually a moronic perspective on this they they're all distrustful of institutions they don't trust the media and yet they just relentlessly spout inaccurate statistics that are given to them by institutions in the media such as the US Census says that we're only a 60% white country so this is how flawed the US Census is and if people on the dissident right had done you know any decent digging they would understand this I am 1 16th Chinese so I could put on the US Census that I am Asian and that I am Caucasian and I would be treated by the US Census as 100% Asian right you put down that you're you know part black and part white let's say you're 1 16th black and 15 16th Caucasians Caucasian the US Census will treat you as 100% black so US Census figures upon which the news media and other experts make so many of the declarations are flawed right they dramatically understate the European percentage of our population and the dissident right just mindlessly cites oh you know whites are already a minority in much of the United States they're getting overwhelmed and they have no understanding about how distorted a picture of the reality of the United States the US Census gives so if you're going to base your entire life you're going to base your entire political activism you're going to base your worldview you're going to base your politics and your culture and your commitments on something like you know percentages of a population that you identify with maybe you should learn something about how those percentages are calculated and how relatively accurate or inaccurate they are and if they're inaccurate now to which extent are they understating or they overstating right so I've been enjoying the podcast if books could kill here is the podcast talking about the awful Thomas Friedman New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist his awful book the world is flat there's definitely a lesson you can learn about mediocrity from Thomas Friedman it's just not this one the fucking New York Times opinion page should be the first stop on that tour so we can't wrap up Thomas Friedman episode without talking about the Iraq war oh yeah I'm going to send you a clip that I know you have seen now that the war is over and there's some difficulty with the piece was it worth doing well I think it was unquestionably worth doing Charlie I think looking back at the 1990s I can identify but there are actually three bubbles of now three bubbles in that classic there was the corporate governance bubble lastly there was what I would call the terrorism bubble oh god and the first two were based on creative accounting the last was based on moral creative accounting what the terrorism bubble that basically built up over the 1990s said flying airplanes into the world trade center that's okay uh air of mine wrapping yourself with dynamite and blowing up Israelis in a pizza parlor that's okay and that built up as a bubble Charlie and 9 11 to me was the the peak of that bubble peak of that bubble what we learned on 9 11 in a gut way was that that bubble was a fundamental threat to our open society bubble threat because there is no wall high enough no ins agent smart enough no metal detector efficient enough to protect an open society from people motivated by that bubble and what we needed to do was go over to that part of the world I'm afraid and burst that bubble and what they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad and basically saying which part of this sentence don't you understand you think this bubble fantasy where it's gonna let it grow well suck on this he's really cooking there this is another thing that you wouldn't understand is funny until you've read the whole book but when he says like three bubbles I was like Tom you son of a bitch you've done it again Tom can't stop him you can't stop him at all times he's thinking of metaphors but also it's the same thing where it's completely fucking inculcating what he's saying he's basically saying like Muslims have a culture of violence and so we're going to go over there and bomb them to fix their culture this clip is somewhat famous because he is literally characterizing the Iraq war not as an effort to oust Saddam yeah to protect anyone from WMDs but to enact revenge on the Muslim world for fostering illiberal ideas yeah and I think that that was so like revelatory like he's just sort of putting it on the table and being like yeah you know this was revenge on Muslims everyone was sort of like so you fucking admit it right because at the time the justification was all about like saving these populations from their dictator exactly we have to get out of power to save these people and it's like these people are basically fucking animals and we should just like kill them until like they behave better and keep in mind this is where Freeman cut his teeth right Lebanon Israel Middle East expertise ostensibly meanwhile he was like many pundits deeply incorrect all the time throughout this era like you know he said the Afghanistan war was over in January 2002 right some highlights from his columns over the years in 1999 during the bombing of Iraq he suggested quote blowing up a different power station in Iraq every week so no one knows when the lights will go off or who's in charge okay that'll fix it in 2005 he wrote about Iraq quote if they come around a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible and we should stay to help build it if they won't then we are wasting our time we should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind the couple months into the Afghanistan war he wrote quote think of all the nonsense written in the press particularly the European and Arab media about the concern for quote-unquote civilian casualties in Afghanistan it turns out that many of those afghan civilians again in quotations were praying for another dose of b-52s to liberate them from the Taliban casualties or not oh hey he's sort of mocking the idea that there were civilian casualties presumably being like come on they were terrorists or something but then at the same time saying that civilians wanted this to happen yeah it doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense it is like this fundamental contradiction and all this I bring up because a good chunk of the final chapters of the world's flat is dedicated to Friedman's belief that the ostensibly insular culture of the muslim world is a threat to globalization wait really yeah he's got like a huntington turn at the end it's in his final chapters titled the muslim question oh no i'm kidding i'm kidding you gotta be careful peter that actually sounded pretty uh pretty real actually sounded pretty plausible sorry um yeah he calls it he calls the muslim culture an unflattener um and he talked at length about how this is something that the muslim world needs to reckon with i think that his writing about the iraq war and about the middle east and war in general is actually really illuminating because the through line between his war coverage and this book is that his primary goal revolves around retaining american hegemony in the coming century right like at first glance you might think that there's a tension or inconsistency here where like this guy's writing about our interconnectedness with the rest of the world but then he's championing these brutal campaigns of vengeance right in the middle east right i actually think it starts to make sense once you realize that his primary concern is american power right he's not writing this book as like a student of technology or something he's writing it as someone who wants to ensure american supremacy whether that means funding science education or destabilizing the middle east he's also doing a very similar thing to nudge where he's pretending to be doing this cool descriptive project like this is just how human nature works i'm like we should make policy according to human nature but then once you get into the guts of it and it's like oh actually we should do a bunch of like crazy libertarian shit right like underneath it is this extremely ideological project right and it seems like he's doing the same thing like i'm just describing how the world is becoming more interconnected and then whisper voice like the muslims are really the problem with this right like that doesn't follow from the premise at all no um i mean he has all of these ideas about like how oh internet interconnectedness will foster peace in the long term and then he gets to the section of the book that's like now let's talk about how muslims are a big wrench in all of this right i'm gonna send you something that is so long and i'm sorry here i can't do the episode unless we say it you make me go all the way through this fucking excerpt i want to say something before this i don't even know if it makes total sense to put it here in at the end of this episode but and i want you to listen to what i'm saying because we read a lot of excerpts here this is the worst thing in this book okay i have a screenshot version of this that is um the entire page is highlighted because i started trying to highlight sections because i was like well i don't want to read all of it it's too long and then i just i realized that i was highlighting all of it just kept going and so i was like well now it looks stupid i'm just gonna highlight the whole page okay he says what if regions of the world were like the neighborhoods of a city what would the world look like i'd describe it like this western europe would be an assisted living facility with an aging population lavishly attended to by turkish nurses the united states would be a gated community with a metal detector at the front gate and a lot of people sitting in their front yards complaining about how lazy everyone else was even though out back there was a small opening in the fence for mexican labor and other energetic immigrants who helped make the gated community function latin america would be the fun part of town the club district where the work day doesn't begin until 10 p.m and everyone sleeps until mid-morning it's definitely the place to hang out but in between the clubs you don't see a lot of new businesses opening up except on the street except on the street where the chileans live the landlords in this neighborhood almost never reinvest their profits here but keep them in a bank across town the arab street would be a dark alley where outsiders fear to tread except for a few side streets called dubai jordan barain qatar and maraca the only new businesses are gas stations whose owners like the elites in the latin neighborhood rarely reinvest their funds in the neighborhood many people on the arab street have their curtains closed their shutters drawn and signs on their front lawn that say no trespassing they wear of dogs india china and east asia would be the other side of the tracks their neighborhood is a big teeming market made up of small shops and one-room factories interspersed with stanley kaplan s at prep schools and engineering colleges halfway through nobody ever sleeps in this neighborhood everyone lives in extended families and everyone is working and saving to get to the right side of the tracks on the chinese streets there's no rule of law but the roads are well paved on the indian streets by contrast no one ever repairs the street lights the roads are full of ruts but the police are sticklers for the rules you need a license to open a lemonade stand on the indian streets luckily the local cops can be bribed and the successful entrepreneurs have their own generators to run their factories and the latest cell phones to get around the fact that the local telephone poles are all down africa sadly is that part of town where the businesses are boarded up life expectancy is declining and the only new buildings are healthcare clinics fucking hell peter it's like just say what you mean man it's not even a metaphor half the time he's just described like he starts off as like the assisted living facility and the gated community and you're like okay this is a metaphor i guess right by the end of it though he's just describing the countries in the african neighborhood life expectancy is declining you don't need the metaphor just say life expectancy is declining in africa what the fuck is this dude right and like there's no rule of law in the chinese neighborhood you're just talking about china right you don't need the neighborhood thing for that and like the air industry is a dark alley except for dubai Bahrain right car in morocco like this is not you stop doing the metaphor please yeah i think what you said earlier is right that like it's not clear that he knows how metaphors work right like metaphors are supposed to simplify situations or like describe the nature of something to say that like the factory was hell yeah it condenses all of this other information but if you're gonna say the factory was hell and like hell it was hot and loud and everybody hated it you don't need the middleman at that point you're just describing the factory the factory was like a neighborhood where my boss was yelling at me all the time it's not metaphor it's not really a metaphor yeah these are the sorts of like little things that you encounter in freedman's writing all of the time wrapped up in what we haven't even discussed as the most ethnically insensitive shit i've ever read just like parties in latin america every night he literally ripped through every region of the world and was like a little bit rude about all of them fuck man this also just like isn't smart he's just like repackaging conventional wisdom bullshit that's why i thought it was worth ending on it a because we have to talk about it okay so what's going on with Vladimir Putin we've got