 I think America is going through a real crisis, a crisis of identity, a crisis of trying to figure out what it is, what it stands for, what it actually represents. For a very long time, the ideas, the founding of America, the ideas that made America what it is, I think the greatest country in human history, I know that might not be popular in this audience, the freest country by many, by many measures, and certainly the most powerful economically and militarily in human history. The ideas that made that America possible have been a decline now for decades, one could argue, even a century. And that decline has reached a real pivot point. It is now a reality that nobody in the political spectrum of the United States represents what were the ideals that made America great. There is no political voice for if you will the founding fathers of America. There is no voice for the concept of individual rights, the concept of freedom, the concept of liberty in the United States. There is a struggle and a battle between a left and a right and who will control our lives and in what way that control will manifest itself. One of the striking things about this midterm election is that while the economy will dominate, yes, I agree, that this is going to be determined, that the Republicans will probably win, certainly in the House, possibly even in the Senate, primarily because the economy is doing so badly under Joe Biden, the certainty of that is that nothing would have been different if the Republicans were running things right now and many of the inflationary pressures that exist today were caused by Donald Trump's policy of writing massive checks to everybody, bailing everybody out during COVID, and generally increasing government spending throughout all four years of his administration. And the Donald Trump argued for an infrastructure bill far, far greater than anything Joe Biden actually passed. And one of the things that is true globally today and true, you see, you're living in it right now in the UK. There was a complete consensus about economics between left and right. You know, a trust tries to cut taxes a little bit, tries maybe to bring in a little bit of markets into the UK political establishment, and she gets crushed for even proposing such a preposterous idea of maybe cutting the top marginal tax rate of 45%, which makes imminent sense as you go into a recession to cut the top marginal tax rate if you care about economic growth ultimately, which you can't defend it because the consensus among the people, the consensus among intellectuals, the consensus among everybody, is we need big government involvement in the economy. And that is true in the UK and that is true in the United States and then it's true in Europe. There's complete consensus about economic issues. We're all way to the left of center on economics. Everybody is, even Elizabeth, even trust now, this trust has been brought to her knees. Now, she is going to be left of center on economic issues. So what's the difference between the Republicans and Democrats? What is the battle about? The battle is about cultural issues. That's how left and right are defining themselves. And to a large degree, that is true of the United Kingdom as well. Here, the big difference between the left and right to a large extent is around these cultural issues. The popularity of Boris Johnson in the last election was not due to his revolutionary economic plans. It was due to his nationalism and his conservative cultural views while shifting left on everything economic. And we're seeing that in the United States, exactly the same phenomena. We're seeing the cultural issues as defining the two political parties. The cultural war as defining war between the two political parties. Economics, in a sense, is irrelevant. Economic outcome might be relevant. That is the swing based on how the economy is doing. But economic policy of the Biden administration and the Trump administration is almost identical. It's almost no differentiation. And I would venture that whether you vote for labor, whether you vote conservative, in the short run, at least, there's going to be very little difference in terms of economic policy. Yeah, and I wanted to put this one in its quantity. She's talking about, you know, Americans, still ordinary Americans, if not their politicians, still are very favor of their rights and their arms. I mean, you can give another example. A lot of them, in certain states, didn't tolerate lockdown, not going to tolerate the government busting them about. Isn't there some optimism there to be found? Not for me, anyway. No, I mean, the very idea that there were lockdowns in the United States of America is so horrific that, yes, about a year after the lockdowns were started, a few people rose up and protested over it. But the very idea that Americans, Democrats, Republicans, anybody, would allow the state to lock them down over a virus is so shadowy that it turned me from optimist or pessimist about America. Because I couldn't imagine, if you told me that there was going to be a virus that primarily kills old people, right, does, it keeps the young people pretty much safe, that we would lock down the entire society, we would lock down everybody and lock them at home, and that Americans would just shrug and go, fine, that's okay. And maybe a year later, they would remember, oh, maybe we have some liberties, and maybe we have some freedoms, and maybe we should reject, is just, I would have never predicted that. And indeed, the CDC never predicted it. And it's why, in not a single plan that the CDC had prepared in advance for pandemics was ever a lockdown ever considered. And in that sense, the West didn't use the CDC manual, they used the Communist Party of China's manual to deal with pandemics. We all became China like that. China has won the cultural battle like that. We're economically moving towards China, and we dealt with the pandemic like China, and it's, I know this is not a popular view in Europe, but that's pretty horrific. The fact that our individual liberties can be taken away by the government like that by scamming us into our homes. And look, I'm not a denier of COVID, I'm vaccinated fully, there's three, I've done four, yeah. And not a denier that this was an awful virus, but this is like the worst way to deal with it possible. And the fact that of all the individual rates that Americans possess, the one that they are most adamant about is that they can hold on to their M16s is not inspiring me. If they held on to their first amendment as strongly as they hold on to those M16s, I would be a lot more inspired, but you're seeing an attack on the first amendment, a dramatic attack on freedom of speech. And again, we're way ahead of you guys, because you guys have hate speech laws and things that violate free speech right off the bat. But in the United States, we're seeing it both on the left and on the right. Clearly Donald Trump was egregiously hostile towards freedom of speech to the extent of going after Jeff Bezos because he owned the Washington Post, because the Washington Post brought the story that was negative towards Donald Trump. The left, with its walnuts and its canceled cultures, clearly does not believe in freedom of speech. There is a real attack on freedom of speech in the United States today. And I wish Americans would be holding on to that, I think, and not to mention separation of state and religion, which I think brings us back maybe to abortion, which there's not particularly a strong, powerful constituency to hold on to that. The left would like to impose their kind of religion on us, and the right would like to impose their kind of religion on us, but impose religion on us both parties want to do. Is it worth thinking about the fact that most Americans are surely not die-hard Trump-Easters or blue-haired woke horrors either, and you're probably not going to want to pick up a gun to defend either of those positions? Most people are normal, and have normal idiosyncratic views on range of issues. Definitely most people are normal, and the fact that we color these states red and blue, but in every red state there are big pockets of blue, and in every blue state there are big pockets of red, and a civil war is not between the states, because as somebody said, Austin, Texas, which is in many regards kind of the heart of Texas, is very, very blue, it's very, very democratic. So the civil war would be within the states, it wouldn't be across the states. I don't see much prospects for civil war, because I will say with regard to the scary part is that such a large percentage of Republicans who support Trump are willing to reject the election, right, are willing to overthrow an election in order to bring them back in power. That is the one, when Trump, out of the equation, I agree civil war is very unlikely. On the other hand, nothing too optimistic. On the other hand, I think America's decline is an ember, that is, I do think America is declining, and this relates to the question about cultural war-related economics. I think it certainly does, because I think the cultural distracts in the fact that America is in decline economically, economic growth in America, everybody cheered when Donald Trump said we had the greatest economy in history, because we grow it 2% again? That's all I can say about that. American economy is a decline, and the only good thing one can say is the Chinese economy is in decline even more so, right, so I think global economy is going to be troubled for the next few decades. And again, this is all kind of distracting from the real challenge which we face, which you mentioned regarding the civil war, which is, what is America? Is America the principles of liberty and freedom and individual liberty and so on, which is supposedly one side, I'm not sure which side, because I don't think that is represented at all in the American political map today. Or is America woke? Or is America, as what's her name, the congresswoman from Georgia said, is America a Christian nation, you know, a fundamentally Christian? So you've got tribalism on the one side, left tribalism and right tribalism on the one side, which is a demonstration of what publicants both are now tribal and collectivistic and anti-American constitution of the Bill of Rights. And I, by the way, would be willing to fight for the death of the Bill of Rights. You know, it's important, yes, you might find one aspect of it to be irrelevant, but there are a number of aspects that keep the country alive and keep, I think, Western civilization going. But both those aspects, both left and right today are tribal. And there is no representative on the political map today, or on the cultural map, not just the political map, the cultural map, for the individualism represented by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. There's no representative for the kind of individualism represented even by somebody who I consider relatively mediocre, Oana Reagan. Oana Reagan could not win in the Republican Party today. And that is a travesty. Now, Oana Reagan's not my ideal, right? But he's sure is better than anybody else in the Republican Party right now. Well, that country of West is going to stay. Oh, yeah, let me just say something about that. Unify it. I mean, country of West, it's sad, because I think country of West has real mental problems. No, this is not funny. I'm not meaning this as a joke. This is documented. He's got bipolar or whatever it is. The guy is mentally not there. And the fact that we idolize him and put him on a pedestal does not help his mental problems. It would be good if you got treatment and we didn't worship him. I mean, generally, who the hell cares when a singer as good as he might be? I don't get him, but as good as he might be, he thinks about anything. Why do we care about singers and movie actors or sports figures? Think about politics. They're irrelevant to the political debate. I mean, they're relevant because people admire them above and beyond anything reasonable. But, you know, they are not shaping the world. We're shaping the world of the intellectuals. We're shaping the world of the professors at universities and public pundits. And even the politicians, though, shape the world. They just, in a sense, they're just mom pieces for the intellectuals behind them. So, if you want somebody to object to it, if you want guidance, it's always been the intellectuals. It's that's where it comes from. And these celebrities, I couldn't care less what anyone said. Some of them said something rational and reasonable. That would be nice, but given that they're almost always, whatever side they happen to be on the political map, unreasonable and completely, you know, completely nuts, why would I care? Gary? So, let me just clarify. I am very opposed to Trump by being opposed to Trump from 2015 on. The fact that he didn't concede the election wasn't surprising at all. He told us he wouldn't concede it in advance. He is the worst thing to happen in American politics, maybe ever. He has destroyed the Republican Party as a credible alternative to the Democrats. I'm almost as anti-Biden and Clinton as anti-Trump. So, it's not like I'm for these others because I'm anti-Trump. I am for an alternative to both. I disagree with my fellow panelists here because I think that what Biden has done is took the worst of Trump's policies and doubled up on it. Globalization is one of the greatest things that's ever happened to the Western world. We have benefited massively from globalization and I know this isn't a popular view today, both on the left and right. But we all are far better up because of globalization and the move, I guess, away from globalization is one that we are going to regret for a very long time. So, it's not that I am ignoring 40% of the population who support Trump. I'm ignoring 90% of the population who support Trump and the people who support Biden. I think they're all wrong. And this is the point I was trying to make and I'll end with this because we're running out of time. Ultimately, the fundamental question for America is, is it the land of the Declaration of Independence? Is it about individualism? Is it about liberty? Is it about freedom? And there is no political voice today for that perspective. At the left and the right are the same when it comes to their collectivistic view of what America is about. It's all about tribes. It's all about groups. It's all about identity politics. I agree completely whether it's white or alternative. And there is no voice today for the core ideas that made America what it is today. And in that sense, America will suffer economically as it evolves away from the land of entrepreneurs and the land of individuals. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Brook show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com. Slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making an appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. 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