 So, why should you care? Why should anybody care? We live in America, pretty peaceful place. We've got our own problems. We're fighting intellectual, philosophical, political battles on every front. Why should anybody care about a war on the other side of the planet? You can see where Ukraine is, you can see where Russia is. It's far from Western Europe. It's really far from the United States. Why should we care? And I think the reason we should care is that while this conflict is happening in a faraway place, the reasons it's happening are relevant to every one of us. Not only is the conflict a conflict about, I think, good and evil and justice, but it is a conflict that politically, ideologically, philosophically is very relevant to the conflicts we all face right here in the United States and has real implications to whether we win or we lose the conflicts that we're engaged in. In many respects, the enemy, the bad guys over there, inspire and are very similar to at least some, not all, some of the enemies we have right here in the United States. I think the war on Ukraine is a conflict of civilizations. It's a conflict of a vision about the future of the kind of political world we want to live in and the kind of world we want to live in. It is a conflict that is challenging to Western civilization. It is a conflict that challenges everything good that I think we have in our world. And to the extent that Russia wins this conflict, to that extent our horizon shrinks in terms of the time we have to change the world. To the extent that Russia fails, we buy some time to change our own world. Now I want to do just a little bit of terminology before I go on because I'm going to use some terminology that might be a little different than the way some other people use it, different than the way Iron Man used it, so I need to clarify that in advance. I'm going to be talking about left and right, but I'm going to be talking about left and right differently than I think often is discussed. For me left is egalitarian collectivism with everything that implies woke and everything else you want to add into that. I think you understand what left is. But right, the way I'm going to use it and the way today I think about it is nationalist religious collectivism. In that sense, I don't believe objectivism is right. You can ask me about it in the Q&A. I'm not going to get into a whole debate right now about it, but that's how I'm going to use it. When I talk about the West, for the purposes of this talk, we can talk about other purposes. You can use it a little differently. For the purposes of this talk, I'm going to refer to Western Europe and the United States. When I talk about Western civilization, I'm referring to the ideas of the Enlightenment, the ideas that I believe have made the West the civilization. And three big ideas, reason, individualism, and political liberty, political freedom, capitalism. So that's the frame. Let's get into a discussion of the war. And I want to start with really the causes of this war. The reason this war happened and the reason it happened when it happened. And here we're going to go into kind of the mindset of the Russians and the mindset of Vladimir Putin in particular, because he is Russia for all intents and purposes. But first, a few words about Ukraine, because you can't understand the Russian perspective without understanding Ukraine. Ukraine became a dependent in 1991. It declared its independence, freeing itself of being part of the USSR. I'll show you maps afterwards and you'll see, you'll see all that. And since then it's been in a struggle, a push-pull struggle between its own attraction, particularly in Western Ukraine, particularly in Kiev and to the west of Kiev, towards the West, towards Europe, towards Western civilization, and a pull to the east coming from Russia, trying to pull it into its domain, trying to make it a part of Russia. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute and Russia's perspective on Ukraine. But it's important to understand that Ukraine is in this shift. Once in a while you get a president in Ukraine who's very pro-Russia. What has happened though over the last 20 years is when that happens, usually there's some questions about the elections themselves. People go out into the streets and demonstrate because they want to be pro-Europe, not on the Russian side. And there is a regime change as a consequence. This has happened twice over the last 20 years. It happened in 2004 with the Orange Revolution and it happened in 2014 with the Maidan. Maidan is the big square in the middle of Kiev, where thousands, tens of thousands of Ukrainians came to protest, a pro-Russian corrupt president, violence ensued, and as a consequence he was deposed and replaced by somebody who ultimately was pro-West and moved Ukraine further to the West. The trend over the last 20 years has been westward. Ukraine has the desire, the will, the interest becoming an integral part of Europe and adopting European values. It wants to be a member ultimately of the EU and now I think certainly wants to be a member of NATO. But it's really important to understand that Ukraine was moving westwards, becoming more like the West. And of all the things Ukraine could do this ultimately was the biggest threat to Russia. It's the culture more than anything else. I've been to Kiev four or five times, I can't remember exactly. I've given a lot of talks in Kiev. You might not know this but Atlas Shrug was the best-selling novel in Kiev in 2015 and 2016. It came out in three volumes. Maybe six months. They came out with a different volume and all three volumes were best-sellers. You could go to the supermarket, it was in the bins, the discount bins where best-sellers land up and you could find it there. I'm not suggesting because of this Ukraine is some objectivist haven and that's where the revolution is going to happen. Ukraine politically is very corrupt. Ukraine politically is really problematic. It has certain authoritarian tendencies. All the presidents they have had, but the movement was towards the West. That was the direction it was heading in. I've met a lot of young people in Ukraine who are passionate about making Ukraine a Western country. So that's important to know in terms of Russia's perspective. Because what does Russia think about the West? What is Russia's perspective on the West? Russia believes that the West fundamentally is decadent, weak, and fragmented. I've got a lot of quotes because I feel like if I just say that, I want to put it in Putin's words. So here's a little bit and you find this in every speech that he gives, almost every speech that he gives, paragraphs like this appear. Look what they're doing to their own people. It's all about the destruction of the family, of culture, of national identity, perversion and abuse of children, including pedophilia, all of which are declared normal in their lives. They are forcing the priests to bless same-sex marriages, bless their hearts, let them do as they please. But here is what I would like to tell them. Look at the holy scriptures and the main books of the other religions. They say it all, including that the family is the union of a man and a woman. But these sacred texts are now being questioned, reportedly the Anglican church is just planning to explore the idea of a gender-neutral God. What is there to say? Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do. Millions of people in the West realize that they are being led to a spiritual disaster. Frankly, the elite appear to have gone crazy. It looks like there is no cure for that. But like I said, these are their problems where we must protect our children, which we will do. We will protect our children from degradation and degeneration. For Putin the West is woke. That's it. It's everything. And he is standing up against it. He is the bastion of a civilization standing up against the West, standing up against the West's degradation, and we'll come back to that word, degradation later. The West is also weak. Putin is engaged in two wars. In 2008 in Georgia, where his forces invaded two sections of Georgia, the West did basically nothing. In 2014, he took Crimea, the West did nothing, they don't boss, the West did nothing. And then he looks and he sees the Trump administration, the Biden administration, pretty much every administration before that, just make a disaster out of Afghanistan, leave with our tail between our legs. The West is weak. It's pathetic. And it's fragmented. Everybody hates each other. Everybody gets along. Western Europe is, everybody's fighting. And the relationship between the Western Europe and the United States, broken. So he sees the West as a decadent place, a place that is failing, a place that is falling apart, a place that is descending, not ascending. In addition, the West is hostile to Russia and always has been, according to Putin. According to Putin and the philosophers, he kind of follows. He has again Putin in his own words, they have only one objective, to prevent the development of Russia. They're going to do it in the same way as they did it before, without furnishing even a single pretext. Doing it just because we exist, or in 2015, during his first speech in Crimea, he says the politics of the containment of Russia, which continued throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, continues today. There is constant attempt to push us back into a corner, because we have an independent position, because we stand up for ourselves. When out time, they started turning Ukraine into anti-Russia. Actually, this project is not new. People who are knowledgeable about history, at least to some extent, realize that this project dates back to the 19th century. The Austro-Hungarian Empire and Poland had conceived of it for a purpose, that is to deprive Russia of these historical territories that are now called Ukraine. This is their goal. There is nothing new here. They are repeating everything. So there's an ancient grievance that somehow the West is interfered with Russia's ambitions, and Russia's rise as an alternative civilization to the West. So that's a view of the West. What's a view of Russia? Well, the view of Russia is that Russia is special, in a kind of mystical sense. Russia has something unique. Indeed, every ethnic group, supposedly, according to, again, the philosophers that Putin listens to, every ethnic group has some kind of biological, determined nature, and ultimately culture. And Russia is truly unique. And it is Russia, and only Russia, that can save the West from itself. It is the projection of Russia onto the West that is the only hope the West has. Now we'll see that there are several Westerners who believe this to be true. So a professor from Moscow State University in an event, he says, Russia's destiny is no less than, quote, to build herself up as a separate civilization, and to think of herself as the conservative savior of Europe. Russia is there to save Europe. It has a mission. It has a destiny. It has a purpose. All this adds up to something, right? Now what are these values that Russia represents? Well, these are conservative values. These are the values of the past. These are the values of tradition. And Putin constantly talked about how he is a true conservative, that what he wants is to leverage the past to create a beautiful future for Russia. But it's all about tradition and family, and the proper role of male and female. If you read Putin's speeches, you'll find a real obsession that he has with homosexuality. To him, this is the real threat that Western decadence poses to Russia, right? We need to go back to proper war for men, proper war for women, and the traditions of Christianity and the traditions of the past. So a complete rejection of the West, rejection of reason for the sake of mysticism and religion, a rejection of individualism. If you read some of the philosophers, again, that Putin either reads from the past or who are current like Dugan, who is a very influential philosopher in Russia today. The one thing they think the West is really evil about is the idea of the sovereignty of the individual, the idea of individualism is a horror to them. It is about the collective, it is about the state, it is about Russia. So let me just see. So for Russia to manifest itself, for Russia to achieve its potential, Russia must return to its past. Russia must resurrect those traditions and that culture which led in the 19th century and early 20th century to a Russian Empire. And he has a vision for a Russian Empire. Can we get the next slide? That is the Russian Empire. Now Russia already is a big country, the biggest in the world by far. But empire is massive. So I'm going to, there we go. All right, I was pressing the wrong button, go figure. The flow is straight. All of this, this is Eastern Ukraine. Western Ukraine was part of the Austrian Empire and parts of it were part of Poland. But all this in the south, this is Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. This is actually part of Turkey, this is part of Iran. This is many Stans from Kazakhstan. It was Uzbekistan, so many of the other Stans, all of the Stans other than Afghanistan here are part of the Russian Empire, all the way to the east and to the borders with Mongolia and with China. Even Finland did not exist. This is as of just before the revolution in 1917. So this is at the height of what, of the size of the Russian Empire. But this is pretty similar to the way it was during much of the 19th century. So Putin embraces a view that this is what Russia is capable of. This is what a true Russia looks like. This is a manifestation of Russia and if you take it one step further, if you read Dugan, then Dugan would say, this is not enough. What Russia to really achieve its historical role, its historical place among the nations of the world, Russia managed to extend to the Atlantic and must dominate all of Europe. Now this sounds bizarre to us sitting here, I know. It reminds me of when the Islamists after 9-11 would say things like, we want Islam to rule the world and we went really, you know, that's kind of ridiculous. Nobody thinks those, but they do. They do think those thoughts. The Muslims thought that, the Islamists thought that. The Russians, at least the Putin-type Russians really think this. Dugan writes extensively about this idea of Euro-Asia, you know, a country that spans from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the entire scope, and again, the manifestation of some kind of mystical Russian spirit, some kind of mystical Russian destiny that is getting compassed this entire sphere. Just to give you a sense, this is from a 2005, 2005 speech, actually let me get the next slide first. So this is the USSR, right? She can see the USSR preserved much of the empire, not all of it, but all these little shaded colors, these are part of the USSR, so they're part of one country, one political regime. This number six is Ukraine. So this was Russia, all these declared independence in 1991 when the USSR fell. What is Putin's response to the fall of the USSR? This is in 2005, he says, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major or the major geopolitical disaster of the century, of all the horrors of the 20th century. The thing that upsets him the most is the fact that these were split off from Mother Russia. This is his ambition. And when he comes to Ukraine, he's very clear, talking to US President George Bush on the sideline of a NATO summit in 2008, he said, Ukraine is not even a state. What is Ukraine? Part of its territories is Eastern Europe, but the greater part is a gift from us when the USSR was broken up. And then in 2021, about seven months before the war started, eight months before the war started, Putin actually wrote an essay, a long essay that was published on the Kremlin's website. And the name of the essay was on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians. And I'll just quote one sentence, the essay is pretty repetitive. This captures it all, I think, quote, are spiritual, human and civilizational ties formed for centuries and have their origins in the same source. Together, we, Russians and Ukrainians, have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful for we are one people. So why did Putin invade Ukraine? Because he views it as his. It's part of Russia. It's one people. He views it as an essential part of a Russian empire. Ukraine today, he tried Georgia, Georgia's right here, Georgia's number eight. Who knows who else Belarus is already in his pocket. He would love to have his hands on Kazakhstan, which is an ally, but not yet completely in his control. One step at a time to resurrect this empire, one step at a time to get closer to the ultimate goal. And in the meantime, he can watch as the West descends into chaos and maybe one day he can actually fulfill the dream of going all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Now you have to add one element to this, which I think is important. And that is that the same time that Russia has this sense that they have this destiny and they are, you know, they are the civilization that's going to replace the West and they are all important, they're also failing. This is before the war. They're poor, significantly poorer than Western Europe. They have a lot of natural resources, but other than that, very little. They have a political system based on one man, a productive system, a system, an economic system based on oligarchs, based on mafia style theft, based on people associated with the government, getting their wealth, all of their wealth from the government. They have a system that is based on violence. I mean, in my show, in my Iran book show, I have a running tally of Russians falling out of windows, you know, oligarchs dying under mysterious ways. This is the methodology. This is how you do competition in the Russian economy. You have your competitor falling out of a window and you take over their business. And Putin himself, I think at the end of the day, is very insecure. As any head of the mafia would be insecure. You don't know who's going to stab you in the back. Now, granted, Putin has done a very good job of surrounding himself with weak people. He's done this on purpose. He doesn't want strong people around him. He's afraid of strong people, but you never know. We just witnessed that last weekend. You never know exactly what will happen. Who will stab you in the back? Who will take you over? So at the same time as he has this grand vision for Russia, he's also super insecure about himself, about his position and about Russia itself. He could be killed at any moment and he knows it. Put that all into the mix. And what you get is an invasion of Ukraine. The West is weak. The West won't respond. The West will just capitulate. If I can do it fast, if I can take Kiev in a week or two, what are they going to do? Nothing. Some boycotts, some stuff. But nothing significant, nothing that really hurts us. We get our own regime in Kiev. We turn Ukraine into a part of Russia or into a state that's completely subservient to Russia. And we've done our job and all this can happen very, very quickly. Because hey, we have the second most powerful military on the planet. And it's a step in the process of creating this destiny. And it's a step towards solidifying Putin's place in history, solidifying his position as the head of Russia, silencing opposition, unifying the country. You all know that war is a good tonic for the people, it unifies people, it gets people excited, it makes people patriotic, and they will unify around Putin. And I think this was the thinking. And the days before the war was engaged and the expectation was that this would go fast. They landed special forces troops not far outside of Kiev. They expected to be able to take Kiev in less than a week. Didn't work out that way. So how has it worked out? There was been a massive failure for Russia. I mean a massive failure at every front from every perspective. Militarily, we know that the assault on Kiev failed. They had a retreat ultimately from all of northern Ukraine. Ultimately, the Ukrainians kicked them out of a vast area in the east, kicked them out of a vast area in the south. So yes, they're still holding significant Ukrainian territory. Maybe we can get the next slide. But this is the second most powerful military. And it's being humiliated by Ukraine, which has a much smaller military. Nobody considered them. If you looked at every military expert on any one of the channels on television in the days when the war began, everybody was predicting that Ukraine would fold. The only difference was how quickly. Days, weeks, months. Everybody thought it was over for Ukraine. With a few exceptions. So this is what they now control. That's Crimea, of course. This is the south. They had a much vast area. They were very close to Kharkiv over here. All of this has been taken back from the Russians. Militarily, they've been humiliated. Their weapons systems don't work. They don't work anywhere near as well as they advertised. The American weapons systems and the Western weapons systems were broadly far more efficient, far more productive. They've destroyed the weapons systems of the Russians. And if you think about Russia as one of its sources of revenue, which it is, the weapons industry, it has a weapons industry. It exports weapons. It's a massive exporter of weapons. Who's going to buy their weapons after seeing how they performed in Ukraine? Indeed, India, which is one of the largest importers of Russian weapons systems in the world. India has just come to the US asking to buy US weapons. They've given up on the Russian weapons system. They're buying Russian oil. That they haven't given up on. But weapons systems, they're not buying. Economically, this has been horrific for Russia. The economy shrunk last year. And the GDP numbers don't capture what's really going on there. Not only are we talking about tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of casualties, dead and injured, of a whole generation of young men disabled. You're talking about hundreds of thousands of those productive Russians leaving the country. They're now in Georgia and Kazakhstan and in Europe and all over the world, but not in Russia. But in addition, the Russian economy itself, quality of life, standard of living have declined dramatically. The Russians are selling their oil. They keep selling their oil. But they're selling their oil where? India and to China at significant discounts. Because that's the only way India and China are willing to buy that oil. And they know they can squeeze the Russians because there's a limited market for the oil because of the, because of all the sanctions. By the way, one of the aspects that gave them courage to go to war, I think, was this idea of energy dependence of the West, right? The West was dependent on Russia for energy. And one of the ways in which they failed is the fact that it turned out, it turned out that Europe could manage without Russia. It turned out that there are other sources of energy that if the Europeans put their mind to it, they can build LNG facilities, liquidified natural gas, and get natural gas to the Middle East or from the United States and not have to depend on all those pipelines from Russia. Which again, this is a massive strategic defeat for Russia, which depended on the fact that the rest of the world was dependent on them. It's not, and we just, this war proved it. But other ways in which this was a massive defeat. You know, some argue that Russia was worried about NATO being stationed in Ukraine. Well, NATO now, after the war, is stationed in Finland, which is closer than Ukraine, a longer border with Russia. You know, I don't know what a drive is from the Finnish border to St. Petersburg, but it's short. Finland is a far bigger threat from a NATO perspective to Russia than Ukraine ever was. Sweden is likely to join. So NATO has grown. Sweden and Finland actually make weapons. They actually have armies. They could actually stand up to Russia. I mean, Ukrainians have stood up to Russia. Anybody could stand up to Russia, really. That's not to diminish the Ukrainians. It's just to say, so they failed with regard to NATO. Ukraine today, you know, they said they were going to Ukraine to demilitarize it. Well, they got the opposite. Ukraine is more militarized today than ever before. They went to Ukraine to stop Ukraine from becoming too close to the West. Ukraine is closer to the West than ever before. Likely to be fast-tracked into the EU once there was over and potentially for NATO membership. And then they're thinking about Europe and the United States and the fragmentation and we fight all the time and they won't do anything. Nothing has united Europe more than this war. Countries that don't speak to each other on a regular basis suddenly agree. Poland, which was kind of shunned by many European countries, suddenly everybody agrees with Poland about the necessity to combat the Russian risk. This has been an incredibly unifying event for all of Europe and for European-U.S. relationships. So we have now a much stronger West from the perspective of Russia and maybe in the most shocking of all is the fact that NATO members in Europe who never used to spend any money on military, on defense are now substantially increasing their budgets. So Germany is committing to spending 2% of GDP on the military for the first time. Europe is going to become much more independent militarily because of this war. So this has been a complete disaster, something of course the Russians can't admit. But you saw it last weekend with Pogosin. First, he came on a YouTube video and he told us that the war was not really about NATO or anything like that. What he said the war was about, just a little, you know, I didn't include this reason. He said it was just a Russian mafia, basically. The Russian oligarchs wanting to steal all the Ukrainian stuff. And that's why they went to war. It's the steal of the stuff. And if you look at all the industries in places like Mali-Tal in South Ukraine and other areas around Ukraine, all the equipment's gone. It's all being transferred to Russia, everything's gone. They're stealing all the wealth, everything they can get their hands on. But what we saw last weekend was in addition to everything else that has set Russia back, Putin has been set back. What we saw last week when it was the first real challenge to Putin in over 20 years. Putin's on thin ice. He is much weaker today than he was when the war started. So Russia has failed. It has failed to achieve all of its strategic goals. Except maybe for one. And that is that it seems like its friends in the West are still strong. They're still supportive of Putin. They're still embracing, call it the Russian way. And this is maybe the most shocking thing about this war. Everything else, I kind of could get a grip on. But the amount of support Russia and Putin have in this country and in Western Europe, but primarily in this country, is truly astounding and truly shocking. But then if you read Putin and you read about how he's anti-woke and how he's anti-left, it kind of starts fitting in. If your perspective on the world is right versus left and the left is really evil and therefore anything you do to combat the left is good, then Putin is your hero. He stands up to the left. He talks the talk and he walks the walk. Russia is appealing to vast segments of the American right, sadly. They like the authoritarianism, the tough guy, the president who doesn't wear a shirt and rides a horse. You think RFK is posing without a shirt on, accidentally? And by the way, this is left and right, because RFK, right? They like the strength, the manliness of a Putin, the sheer force of his character. He stands up to the West. He stands up to the leftists. And there are many in this country who admire that. Don't believe me? Let me read you for one of the most influential people on the right in America today. And that is Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson writes, Putin regards the current West as decadent to the point of absolute unworthiness, particularly on culture and religious front. But Putin tells his people that he sees us falling far too far under the sway of ideas, very similar to those that produced the revolutionary frenzy of the communist movement. This is the left. And then Jordan Peterson continues. And we are degenerate. Or he says, sorry, he says this is a question. And are we degenerate in a profoundly threatening manner? I think the answer to that may well be yes. The idea that we are ensconced in a cultural war has become a rhetorical commonplace. How serious is that war? It is serious enough to increase the probability that Russia say will be motivated to invade and potentially incapacitate Ukraine merely to keep the pathological West out of that country. And he says, and Russians believe that they have a moral duty. And they have the highest moral duty to oppose the degenerate ideas, philosophy and theology of the West. And there's something about that that is not wrong. We cannot do without the Russians on our side, here in the rest of the Western world. But Jordan Peterson, Russia is part of the West. Indeed, Russia is not just part of the West. Russia is a crucial part of the West. Russia is the part of the good part of the West. The part is associated in his mind with religion and tradition and the past and authoritarianism. We can't do without that. Indeed, for Jordan Peterson, for America to become right, for America to fix itself, we must return to our Christian roots. We must return to religion. And again, here he is inspired by what he sees from Putin. He says, there is every sign of a revival of Christianity in Russia, including a veritable storm of church building and cathedral construction. Putin himself is a practicing Christian and it appears that he has been strongly influenced by such ideas. The Russian leader frequently speaks of his country's role as a bulwark against the moral decadence of the West. And he speaks in philosophical and theological terms with a degree unthinkable in a Western leader. So for Jordan Peterson, Russia is the ally of those conservatives or those on the right who are fighting the left. And those, of course, are the only two alternatives they can imagine or they are presented in the world. They love the unabashed nationalism of Russia, the imperialism, the idea that the state is all important. And think about the national conservatives and they are the moderates of some of these groups. So the West, the West is threatened today. We know this, if we talk about Western civilization, if we talked about the ideas of reason, individualism, capitalism, the West is under attack, under attack from the left and under attack from the right. And we, who I think represent best what Western civilization really is philosophically, we face a two-front battle, a two-front battle facing the collectivists of both sides, the mystics of both sides, the statists of both sides. The Ukraine-Russia, or the Russian war on Ukraine is a manifestation of one of those battles that we are fighting today, the battle we fight with the right. Russia represents for the right what kind of an ideal state looks like, hockening back to all those traditional values and religious values and mystical values. To the extent Russia wins, I don't think that's possible at this point, but to the extent that it could win, that will embolden those elements on the right in the United States and in Europe, make them stronger, they will get more support from Russia. Russia already funds many of these political parties in places like Europe, the right-wing nationalist parties, the right-wing religious parties. A Russian victory is a victory for the new right. It is a victory for the worst kind of right. A Russian loss doesn't guarantee us anything, but it buys us some time. It buys us some time to fight these enemies that we must fight. It buys us this time, buys us some time to educate the world about the alternative to the left and the right, an alternative to the collectivism, the mysticism and the statism that they represent. It buys us some time to save Western civilization. Thank you. All right, I see a line of questions. Nikos. Hi, Aaron, thank you very much. So the question is, how does this war end? So on that part, on the territories which are still occupied by Russia, the red part, there's a significant part of the population who would want to be in one way or the other part of Russia. So do you see any realistic way that this war would end and that Ukraine would still be intact as it is today? And is there a chance it ever gets to NATO? Thank you. So is there a chance that the war ends and Russia gets to keep the Donetsk and Crimea and maybe some other relatively Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine? I think there's a chance. And I think what Putin really is counting on right now is still the weakness of the West. What he's counting on right now is the idea that the West will stop at some point giving weapons. Let's say, I don't know, I can think of several Republican candidates who might win the presidency and stop providing weapons to Ukraine, you could see elections in Germany flipping and a much more pro-Russian government in Germany rising and other countries around Europe and the Poles are alone because the Poles are not gonna change. Of all the countries in Europe, the country is more dedicated in its anti-Russian, I think, is Poland. So you could see that. And his strategy right now is to drag this war out so that that is what he achieves because he can't win at this point. All he can do is drag it out so that there's a change in government in some of these key countries like the United States and they negotiate some thing that allows Russia to keep Crimea and to keep Donetsk or Donbass or that area of Russia. But militarily, I think if the West provides Ukraine with the weapons, I think the Ukrainians are gonna kick the Russians out of the entire area of Ukraine. It's just a question of what Ukraine was before this invasion. It's just a question of time, whether they have the time and it's a question of whether the West will continue to support them. I'm not convinced the West will. Again, I think there's serious cracks. Once you get elections, Marie Le Pen is thought to be the leading candidate again in France. Macron is very unpopular. If she wins down the road, if she gains in strength and Macron needs to show that he's not, so who knows what happens in Europe over the next year. That's what Putin is counting on. He's gonna drag his feet. He's gonna play defense so that Europe shifts and America shifts. Thank you very much. You spoke about Dugans and Putin's idea. To what extent do you think general Russian mentality, I mean, these people's idea are representative of general mentality of the Russians, right? We know that what is ultimately much more important is mentality of the nation, not the leaders that are ruling the country. So if they one day get rid of Putin, there will be pregos and maybe even much worse people, what is, what is, and we know that tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people who disagree with Putin left Russia, what remains there? Is it the worst mentality than Putin? Is it similar mentality? So what is it? Look, I think that we understand that it's intellectuals the shape of culture. It's ideas the shape of culture. And Russian ideas, the dominant Russian ideas, at least since the days of Dostoevsky, anti-Western civilization ideas. If you think about Dostoevsky, I have somewhere this quote from Dostoevsky about the purpose of the Russian people is to save the West in the name of Christianity. You'll see revival of Christianity in Russia and that'll sweep through the West and Russia. So this is not new. This is not Dugan. This is Dostoevsky, right? 150 years ago, 130 years ago, whatever. You know, the number of intellectuals, the number of philosophers since then who have repeated that kind of line and that kind of mystical view of Russia and what it means and it's significant, that has to have an impact on the culture, on the people in Russia. Ayn Rand, she said it's a mystical collectivist culture. And I don't know if she said this, but she implied it would take decades to change that. And indeed, when the Berlin Wall fell, many people said, well, that's it, right? We want liberal democracy, whatever that is. One, and Russia will just become part of the West. Well, no. It became mafia land where the mafia took over whole industries and it became a land of authoritarianism, mysticism, collectivism, exactly what you'd expect from the culture that has led to this point, that led them to become the USSR. That wasn't an accident. It's not an accident that they became the first real communist country. All of this is a consequence of the ideas that are deeply embedded in Russian culture. And I think that, so I think if Putin disappears, you get somebody as bad or maybe worse for a while. Is there hope long-term? Of course there is. Because people have free will, they can't change. There are hundreds of thousands of Russians who left because they wouldn't succumb to this kind of authoritarian government. They could come back, you could see a real change, you could see kind of a liberalization of Russia, but that's far-fetched. I mean, I think it's gonna be really, really difficult to imagine a world in which that happens. It doesn't look good for them. But I will say this. I mean, you could have said the same thing about Ukraine because Ukraine was so much under the influence of Russian culture and Ukraine has moved away. So it is possible. It is possible and you want to give up on people. There's always that potential. Thank you, Ron. Amazing talk. So you started with a premise that success or failure of our enemies overseas impact the success or failure of our enemies here at home. And I agree with you. And yet as Russia fails in spectacular fashion, Putin's head of propaganda, Tucker Carlson, is still on the rise. Why? What's it gonna take for people like Tucker to be held accountable? You know, I don't know. It's very depressing. Something has happened over the last, I don't know, since Trump, I think. And that is that people won't accept reality. They don't. They just ignore it. They come up with conspiracy theories that explain everything. And Pugosin is not actually the enemy of Putin. He's actually, this is all Putin doing 4D chess. And there's a whole constellation there. And this is all strengthening Putin. It's making him stronger. I don't know. You can't even talk about it because it's completely arbitrary. Say it has no cognitive standing. There's nothing to say about these things. And Tucker Carlson is a perpetrator of some of the worst conspiracy theories I think today. And I think he is completely divorced from reality, from facts, and people don't seem to care. And to the extent that facts don't matter anymore. Yeah, it's a, that's our biggest problem, I think, of all the problems we face today. It's an epistemological problem. People don't care about facts and about reality and about truth. If we're truly on a post-truth era, then it's over because all we have is truth, facts, reality, reason, logic. What else is there? So, you know, I don't know. My hope is that Russia loses so badly that they can't ignore it anymore. But, you know, the ability of human beings to rationalize and to evade and to create stories, call them conspiracy theories, is astounding to me. And they manage to somehow do it anyway. I mean, if he loses, they'll call that 4D chess. And actually, he's going to do something around. And when you say, look, Finland has joined NATO. That's bad. It doesn't even register with them. They can't even respond. So, I don't know. If we knew, maybe we'd have some good arguments to convince some of those people. I, you know, Tucker Carlson, I think, is just a liar. I'm convinced he knows exactly what he's doing. This is a marketing ploy. He, this is how he gets his audience. He knows what attracts an audience. He says what he needs in order to attract an audience. I think that was revealed in this lawsuit between Fox and Dominion, where he was saying one thing on his text to other Fox employees and something completely else on air during, you know, after January 6th and after the election. So, you know, Tucker Carlson will do what Tucker Carlson does. I mean, he's an entertainer and he entertains. It's the fact that he has such a following which is truly scary. But imagine what it would have looked like if Russia wins. That's my point. If Russia wins, it gives him so much power. It gives him so much strength. It legitimizes everything he says, even among people who might be on the fence or might because if they lose, at least we have reality on our side, right? If you can point at it. If they win, Tucker becomes much more powerful than he already is and that's scary. Great response. Thank you. Yaron, we have a question from the online audience. Sure. Does America's massive research investment in Ukraine's military serve America's self-interest? Look, if we lived in Lausifere, America and the government was as small and as limited as we believe it should be. And it had any kind of semblance of a strategic foreign policy, a real self-interested foreign policy as I think we understand it, then Russia would have never invaded Ukraine and this question would be off the table. You would need it. Nobody would mess with America. Nobody would mess with the West. And the West would be such an example of a shining city on a hill that game over. But the fact is we live in a mixed economy. The fact is that the United States spends huge quantities of money on all kinds of things that have nothing to do with our interests. Of all the things the United States spend money on today, is the money sent to Ukraine not in our self-interest? No, of course it's in our self-interest. It's a positive investment in the security of the United States. It places a real limit on Russian expansionism and Russian imperialism. It is a statement about the value of freedom and the value of liberty. I mean, as we understand it, in a mixed economy kind of sense, right? Most of the weapons we are sending, I mean, this is important because I don't think people talk about this. Most of the weapons we're sending Ukraine are weapons we don't need. The primary threat the United States faces today from a strategic perspective is China. We're not going to go to war with Russia. Russia is not a threat. As you can see, it's not a threat to Ukraine. It certainly is not a threat. I mean, Ukraine can be there. It's certainly not a threat to the United States. We're probably not, in our lifetime, going to go back to the Middle East in force. You know, I think that's in our culture. We're just not going back to the Middle East. Where are we going to use these tanks and artillery pieces? A war with China, if such a war happened, is an air war and a sea war. It is a navy and an air force enterprise. I mean, if we had a strategy, which we haven't had a strategy since World War II, if we had a military farm policy strategy, we would be investing all our military resources right now in a navy and an air force. And then, by the way, strategic air defense systems to knock down hypersonic and ballistic missiles out of the air. The idea that Israel can knock out little projectiles that are shot within seconds, in the middle of seconds, with the Iron Dome, and we are completely exposed to ballistic missiles that take minutes to get to us is bizarre and absurd and just means we haven't invested in the technology enough. We should be sealed. This country should be sealed so that nothing can hit it. And I believe it's doable. It's just a matter of the right technology and the right investment in that technology and doing. Israel just announced the first, it's the first weapon designed to knock down hypersonic missiles, hypersonic missiles are these missiles that go more than Mach 5. So really, really fast and maneuverable. And Israel now has a missile that'll take those down. We're afraid that China has a lot of these, so this is a huge step towards defending ourselves against China. Those are the kind of things we should be doing. More Abrams tanks, where are we gonna deploy them? More artillery pieces. We're not gonna put tanks in Taiwan. We're not gonna put artillery in Taiwan. You're gonna put missiles and ships and airplanes out of Guam into Taiwan if that becomes a war. So the whole strategy needs to shift and we got a bunch of Army equipment that we don't really need. Let somebody who can use it for good cause use it. And yes, from a budgetary perspective, it costs $63 billion or whatever it is. But a lot of it is not gonna be replaced. So a lot of it is not net and added expense to the U.S. So yes, I think it is an American self-interest. I wish America had a strategy. I wish America could think about these things. I wish America understood what its self-interest is and how to deploy its resources in such a way. But given all the money we spend around the world on horrible causes and on, we have bases in 120 different countries we have American military all over the world, not acting in American self-interest often. This is one cause that I think is worthy of our support. If I may ask another America-centric question, what would it be different in this situation if last presidential election, the other guy won? Would he give Russia a moral sanction, claim there are heroes on both sides, fly over and occupy a territory to take a photo op with a Bible or just completely abandon them like Hong Kong? I don't know. So it's really hard to tell. But my guess is that he would have abandoned Ukraine. That he would let the Russians have it. And he probably would have negotiated some deal where you would have got a Russian figurehead in Kiev and he would say, I cut a deal and I made a deal and he would have come off as a... And that's what he's saying now. I would meet with Putin. We'd fix it all just like he fixed it with North Korea. I mean, we'll just arrange everything and everything will line up. But ultimately, Donald Trump would not is not gonna do anything different in a positive sense. And I think he would in a minute abandon the Europeans. He would say, this is a European problem, let them deal with it. We don't need to be involved. So I think it would be quite a bit different, I think in a negative sense. Yes, I think you're at odds. I mean, I can't think of anything foreign policy-wise that Donald Trump did that was good other than maybe what he did in Israel. But yeah, no reason to expect any better in the circumstances. He'd probably also react to Putin's threat of nuclear warfare by bragging about our own as if that would solve anything. So yeah, it's very close to my guess. I mean, look, if you saw his press conference with Putin when they met, I forget where they met. I mean, Putin was like overshadowed him. Putin was the man there. And it was like Trump was saying, I don't believe my own security services. I believe Putin. Putin's a good guy. I like Putin. I mean, that was our president. I mean, I'm not an admirer of Biden, but the reality is that on certain issues related to foreign policy, both with regard to China and with regard to Ukraine, I think Biden is being better than Trump would have ever been. I think Trump was a disaster when it came to China. I think he emboldened them. He did all the wrong things. I think Biden's actually done some good things with regard to China. Thank you very much, sir. For quite some time, Ukraine has consistently ranked poorly in terms of economic freedom according to the Heritage Foundation, even worse than Russia. Aside from that, the nation has faced many accusations of corruption. With that being said, do you think it is a wiser to simply oppose Russia rather than outright support and champion Ukraine? Yeah, there's no question. Ukraine is a corrupt country. It has its oligarchs. Zelensky was kind of a fresh face, but all indications were in the first two years is that he was unfortunately succumbing to the same kind of corrupt system and was not being as radical as I think many people who voted for him would have liked him to be in terms of changing the system. The difference is this. The difference is that the Ukrainian people have voted repeatedly and want the country to move more towards becoming a Western country. So yes, it has a political class and a political establishment that is corrupt and that is bad. And those kind of political systems are very difficult to get rid of. You need somebody truly committed to the cause who really understands what they're doing in order to do that. Georgia, the country of Georgia actually managed to get rid of that corruption amazingly, but that's because they had a unique circumstance where they had a prime minister and a government that was uniquely committed to relatively free markets. Actually more committed than any other government I know of to free markets for a while, at least. Georgia's, Ukraine just hasn't had that, but the people want that. They want to move in that direction. And I think in that extent, and again, I've been to Ukraine and I've talked to people. I support those people. I've been to Russia. And look, I didn't want to say this, but because this is subjective, completely subjective. But of all the countries I've been in the world and I've been to, I don't know, 80, maybe. The place where I felt least comfortable was Russia. I will take China over Russia any day in terms of a visitor, in terms of a tourist, in terms of a lecturer, in terms of any of these things. And in terms of the people. As Russia's oppressive, it has an oppressive sense to it. Ukraine didn't have that. Kiev was vibrant and exciting and young people behaved like young people in the West in ways that you did not see in Russia. At least I didn't see it. I mean, you know, again, I'm speaking only from personal, my experience. I would, you know, so funny story. So the first time I went there was in St. Petersburg. And the nice thing about that was the guy who introduced me was talking about Ayn Rand and he said, yes, here in St. Petersburg, we need a sculpture of Ayn Rand and we need to call one of the boulevards after her name. So she's definitely got a presence within St. Petersburg and among certain people over there. But in the Q and A, somebody asked me, this is probably 2015, 14, I don't know. Somebody asked me, Yvonne, so what do you think of Putin? I said, I think he's a thug. And you could tell the room kind of fell a little quiet and everybody kind of backed up a little bit. And afterwards, and I elaborated about this as I'm off your economy and I'm off your political system and this is force and this is anti-liberty and all of that. People came up to me and I said, you don't say that in Russia. You just, not a good idea. Don't do that again. So yeah, so that's, so I'm pro-Ukraine. Not because I'm pro the, you know, the corruption, but because I think that they're moving in the right direction. They wanted to move in the right direction and I think the culture was ready to move in that direction. And they were, you know, I think the Maidan, if you read up about Maidan in 2014, you know, they demonstrated for relative liberty, for freedom, many of the protesters were killed. They stuck it out in that square over the winter. They fought for their own freedom. They got rid of a corrupt president. They replaced them with somebody better who started to move in the right direction. Not at the speed we would want, but yeah. So it's not just that I'm anti-Russia, although that's certainly the emphasis. The emphasis should be to be anti-Russia more than to be pro-Ukraine. You said, objectivism is not on the political right. Is the political compass with the two axes and the four quadrants better or does it cause a similar problem with us being confused with libertarians, for example? And if so, how do I introduce my political views when I'm asked about it in a situation like a cocktail party where there's not a lot of time to get into, well, existence exists. And, you know, to go from metaphysics on up to give a moral. And the cocktail party is the ideal place to talk about existence exists. You've got that cocktail right there in your hand and it's not, well, maybe it is poison. I don't know. No, look, my view is there's only one political spectrum. And I don't like the quadrants and all that because the terms, the way you define them is everything. And they're defined in ways that are not objective. But the political spectrum is individualism, collectivism, capitalism, statism. And I think it forks when you get to collectivism because there are many forms of collectivism. There's only one form of individualism at the end of the day. But there are many forms of collectivism. So it forks into left-style collectivism and right-style collectivism and middle of the road, nothing in the style of collectivism. You get all the different varieties. And then you get some people who are not objectivist who are generally on the individualist line and are quite as consistently objective about what individualism means and what it applies to limited government and how it, but you get some people who they call the classical liberals maybe, right, that are a little bit on the individualism side. And then there's us. And we're pretty alone over here. There's not a lot of people over here that have a true understanding what individualism is because you cannot have a proper political understanding of individualism without a proper understanding of individualism as a moral concept. And therefore as egoism. So, and that's why we're alone here because they know nobody else has that moral concept. So that to me is the spectrum. And you know, and I think 40, 50 years ago, the rights, there were elements of the right. There were significant elements, not minor elements, significant elements of the right that believed in individual rights or at least some view of individual rights that were on this spectrum towards individualism. So you could say the right represents ultimately individualism. I think those elements on the right are so small today and the dominant of the right is collectivism that you use that terminology is just confusing. It's confusing in your own mind. And I think it's confusing for the audience that doesn't quite understand it. So you say I'm not on the right as you understand it today and I'm not on the left as you understand it today. I'm an individualist. I'm a capitalist. I'm a free market guy. Thank you. Nobody else is. We have another question from the online audience. Okay. How can you say that to the American right? Russia is the savior of traditions and religious values. These values in the West are completely different from those of Russia. I mean, they're completely different in their minutia, right? Because they are Eastern Orthodox church and in the West were Protestant and Catholic. But the idea of the role of religion in one's life is the same. The idea of the insignificance of the individual versus the collective is the same. Again, of these certain elements in the West. The anti-left, and this is the key. Look, what seems to unite people on the right and some good people on the right who are willing to associate with the very bad elements on the right is opposition to the left. And what I think mostly attracts Jordan Peterson to Putin is this idea that Putin really stands up to the left. He's willing to talk the talk. He's willing to say it. He's willing to advocate for Christian values. Yeah, we might disagree about whether when you put the piece of thing in your mouth that's really the body of Christ or just a metaphor for the body of Christ, whatever the theologians want to debate, right? But that's not what's important. What's important is, is Christianity at the center of life or isn't it? Is Christianity to guide us? Is, for example, should homosexuality be banned legally or not? I mean, this is a big deal for Putin. He mentions this in every single speech. And while the American right often doesn't want to touch that because it's not the most, the topic that's most popular for them, when you dig a little deeper, watch Matt Walsh or watch, what's his name? Knowles on daily wire, thank you. On the daily wire, you see exactly what they think, right? They're the worst of the worst. And this is not a daily wire. Ben Shapiro, we've thought maybe it sometimes he's pretty good. These are the people in his umbrella, right? His umbrella organization. These are the worst of the worst. I mean, so it's exactly the same values at the end of the day, even if, you know, they have some theological differences at some point. Indeed, I've seen some articles criticizing people on the right in America for supporting Putin because Putin's anti-Catholic and it's so important to, you know, to the West, you know, most of the intellectuals on the right tend to be Catholics. So it's so important Catholicism, so important Putin's anti-Catholic scene must be anti-West and that's their argument. But that's not our argument and it can be our argument. We see the commonalities between all the mystics, between all these religionists of various types. And in that sense, there's no difference. So maybe I'm mistaking the forest for the trees here, but do you think that nuclear non-proliferation efforts against U.S. friendly countries by the U.S. government has contributed to Russia feeling emboldened to invade Ukraine? Good question. I think that's probably part of it. The fact that we will not differentiate between good guys and bad guys. Can't have nukes. Doesn't matter if you're good guys or bad guys. I think is a real problem. I mean, you solve a lot of problems in Asia if Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have nukes. A lot of problems go away, but we can't conceive of that because we're just against proliferation no matter if you're good guys or bad guys, that's it. You're done. And the same, like we kind of know Israel has nukes but we don't want to acknowledge it. And because if we acknowledge it, we'd have to say, oh, bad Israel, don't do that. Because we want it, we have an egalitarian view of this thing. And this is part of the problem of not having a strategy vis-a-vis foreign policy, not being able to identify allies, not being able to identify the good guys versus identifying the bad guys. So yes, I think that embolder is not just Russia but it'll embolden China. Thank you for your lecture. I am born and raised in Ukraine. And my parents from St. Petersburg, I also lived for 18 years in Crimea. So for me personally, it's the tragedy. And I am ultimately anti-war. So with that come my questions, two questions. Possibly it is not as widely known information but both Joe Biden and Hunter Biden were officially wanted in Ukraine before 2020. In fact, the Ukrainian federal service has been released in 2020 a large report on Biden family crimes. It is available online and has been translated into English. It has shocking facts and numbers. Would you please comment on Biden's family involvement, particularly involvement with Burisma, ownership of lithium mining in Ukraine and making my homeland an ultimate money laundering machine. My second question, we must follow the money and our military industrial complex reported $140 billion earned since the war started, accordingly proxy war in Afghanistan is over. Another one is started. So I don't have any new information about the Biden's Burisma in Ukraine. Would I be shocked if the Biden's got $5 million from Ukraine over Burisma and over that, the size of the thing doesn't matter, right? It's the principle, no, I wouldn't be shocked at all. But am I shocked at any American politician are getting rich by cutting deals in all kinds of ways and all kinds of means? No, I mean, they're all corrupt. I'm sorry, but almost all of them. Do you think Hillary Clinton gets $250,000 per speech because she's a good speaker or anybody cares what she has to say? People are buying access. This is how it's done. Before, I'm sure her rates are way lower today than they were before she ran for president. They expected her to win and they paid her $250,000. Every single one of these politicians is rich. How do they get rich? They don't produce anything. They don't create anything and they get rich. You know, I've used this example before, what's a Kushner? Kushner's Trump's brother-in-law. Nobody talks about this. This is not in the media. It hit, it was a story a little bit for a while and then it disappeared because nobody wants to delve into these things, right? But Kushner just raised a private equity fund. First private equity fund he's ever raised in his life. $5 billion, that's a lot of money. Guess who gave him two of the five? Well, the Saudis did. The Saudis did. Now, why did the Saudis give him $2 billion? Most of the investment committee, it was reported in the media, most of the investment committee of the Saudi investment fund was against it. Why? Because he had no experience. He's never done private equity. Why did they insist giving him $2 billion? Well, who was the guy from the Trump administration who did all the deals in the Middle East? Oh, Kushner. So is there a payoff here? I mean, personally, I think there is, but I can't prove it. Nobody can prove it, so he can get away with it. And he's just, you can calculate in your head what the fee income that he gets on the Saudis, $2 billion. It makes him a very, very rich man. And they all like this. All these rich politicians, very few of them were born rich or born into wealth, but somehow they come out of the other side. I mean, do you see the house that Obama's bought? I mean, I'm not saying they got a suitcase with full of cash, but again, they get speaking engagement and they have contacts and they do consulting and they do things because once you have a mixed economy, corruption is inevitable. Once you have a mixed economy, you have all these pressure groups and they are push and pull and most of it's legal, but corrupt. And they fund and they have access and regulators become, go into companies and company vice presidents become regulators and it's everywhere. It's corruption is endemic to a mixed economy. There's just no way around that. The only way to get rid of the corruption is to get rid of the mixed economy. What was the second question? Oh, the military industrial complex. Like, yeah, they're making a lot of money. They make a lot of money during war. They're the only so-called beneficiary of war is the people who produce the weapons. Nobody else benefits because they're either dying or their tax money is being used and so on. But look, the problem in the United States today is not that the military companies are making too much money. The problem in the United States is not that we're spending too much money on the military. The problem in the United States is we're spending too much money, period. And we're running massive deficits and they're way in excess of anything the military spends. And the other problem is that when we spend money on the military, we spend it in wasteful, non-strategic ways. It's very hard to spend on the military when you don't have a strategy on what you're trying to achieve. So again, the military spending becomes pressure group. Who gets the pressure? Who gets to decide? And that's, again, the mixed economy. What we need is a military, I think could be a lot smaller than it is today, focused on the strategic interests of the United States that is ruthless and brutal at doing what it's supposed to do. And there's a lot in the military that is unnecessary as a consequence. But that, the reason it's bloated is not because of the industrial military complex, although that's part of it. It's because there's no strategy. There's no strategy so anybody can start, you know, I want a warship and I want this ship and I want that plane and I want this tank and I want that. Why not? Let's invest in all of it. Maybe it is a strategy. No, I don't think there's a group out there trying to bulk us all and conspiring behind that. Because there's no responsibility. No, because at the end of the day, central planners like that, they can barely do anything to design one of these complicated conspiracy theories behind our backs way above the pay grade of any of these guys. Thank you. We have another question from the audience. Okay. What do you think the West should do about this conflict? Send more weapons, money, troops? No, I don't think we should send troops. I don't think they're necessary. And I don't think NATO should get involved directly because I do think there's a threat of the use of nukes which could escalate in ways that would be very harmful to everybody, to the West. I think we should do what we are doing now which is support Ukraine militarily, supported more importantly, morally and politically. But I do not think NATO should get directly into a direct conflict with Russia unless it's absolutely necessary. And I don't think it is. Hi. You briefly touched on Dostoevsky and some philosophers influencing Putin's regime, perhaps like Ivan Alein or Lev Gumiyev. And so I would ask what you think the recurrent roots of Russian authoritarianism are because they've gone through several rebuilds in at least the 20th century and before. Well, I mean, I think I'm not an expert on Russian philosophy, but it strikes me from reading, going back to Dostoevsky, but Alein is supposed to be very influential on Putin. Dugin, I read quite a bit on Dugin. I watched a bunch of interviews of Dugin and read a little bit of Dugin. What unites it is a deep mysticism, a real mysticism, right? That we in the West find primitive and weird because it's not exactly just Christian. It's interwoven with this special nature of the Russian people and something unique about the Russian people. That again, I think it's very foreign to the way we look at the world. A sense of collectivism that comes from that kind of biological determinism. And as a consequence, I think collectivism and mysticism always lead to the need for a strong man to commune with the world of spirits and communicate to us what needs to be done. So I think the authoritarianism is kind of embedded in that mysticism and collectivism. And I think that unites all of them from Dostoevsky's writings, which are less political. They're more cultural, but you see the threads in there all the way to Dugin today. And Dugin is the worst of them because he's complete eclectic and he's such a mystic. It's, he says stuff then you go really? It's just so bizarre. But so, I mean, but the thread, the pretty consistent. Now they've been more liberal in the traditional liberal sense, thinkers in Russia but they've always been marginalized and they've never gotten a lot of traction. Thank you. Hi, I think this one might be a big one. I think I've heard on your show a few times say that a country should not exist if it can't get its own people to volunteer to fight for it or something like that. Maybe it goes back to Ayn Rand, the reference, but like there are people in Russia, a lot of young people don't wanna fight this war. They're being press ganged to be taken off the street, put into a uniform to go and sent out to fight and to die. There are mobile crematories for these soldiers. I mean, how horrible. But what I was saying for, can you clarify about that? Sure, and just to be accurate here, I mean, Ukraine has a draft as well. If you're not allowed to leave the country if you're male and under a certain age, everybody's drafted into military. So it's not like Ukraine is an emblem of liberty here with regard to a draft. I said it, don't please don't attribute this to Ayn Rand because I think she'd agree with me, but I don't think she said this. I said this with regard to Israel. People always tell me, you're for voluntary army, what'll happen in Israel if you have a volunteer army, then not enough people will volunteer and Israel has all these enemies and it's surrounded with enemies. And what I said was a country where the people are not willing to fight for their own liberty, their own freedom voluntarily is not a country that deserves to exist. So if Israel can't raise an army to defend itself, then it won't exist. So be it. But that doesn't give the authorities the right to force you to go serve for cause you don't wanna fight for. So that is the context. I think that's true of Israel, I think it's true of Ukraine, it's true of the United States. Of course, Ayn Rand was a huge opponent of the draft in the United States. But even I think in a war where the enemy was right here, not just in wars that were necessary like in Vietnam or Korea. Abton. I wanted to offer a comment and a thanks so and a criticism. How long is this gonna be? Very short, I promise. It's not a mini speech. I feel like you glossed over maybe the most interesting, most important point that you made which is we're buying time, right? And it feels like every other source that advocates for this war, they're advocating for just stalemate. They just wanna fight forever. It's bizarre. And so I just wanted to thank you and actually whoever made it possible for so many first timers to come and all the scholarships, it's been less than 24 hours and I've lost count of the number of first timers on scholarships I've met. It's an unbelievable benevolent act by the donors who made that possible. Absolutely. Thank you. And it feels a little bit like knowing that some portion of these people are gonna continue on. We'll join maybe the Inran University, actually become intellectuals in this battle. It feels a little bit like maybe the start of an intellectual Manhattan project and I think that's the only way, as you say, this can really be one. It's a war of ideas and we're leading the offense. No one else is. So thank you everybody. I missed the criticism, but okay. Maybe a little bit of the sin of humility. You're leading the charge in many ways. I think maybe the most prominent public voice actually providing a moral foundation for why this makes sense. Thank you. Thank you. When Russia invaded, I guess the most recent time, everybody was outraged for maybe a month and then all of a sudden I started seeing these right wing people get triggered and be against the Ukraine in this war and pro-Russia. Did something happen to trigger that? First, I think they stayed quiet because it was obviously Russia initiated a war. This was an act of initiation of force. There's no question about that. Russia was in the wrong and in those first few days or first few weeks, they would have come off as two obviously pro the initiation of force and I think they backed off a little bit. They also wanted to see what would happen. I think they thought it would be quick and then they could kind of celebrate, right? Russia won and it was over and the West would have done nothing and it wouldn't have mattered. Oh, that's right. I thought we were going to the 30 past, so. And then the war stalled. Russia was not being victorious. It wasn't happening quickly and they started speaking up because it's what they truly believed all along and time had passed. The American people had kind of forgotten about it a little bit. It wasn't at the top of their headlines. The Russian aggression maybe was receding into further into the back and they felt more emboldened to come out and do this and if you're on Twitter, if you follow some of these accounts, I mean the number of people who are coming out as pro Russia is truly astounding and it's the one thing that unites, one among many things that unites kind of the new rights and the far left. It's, you know, both are on Russia's side in this conflict and it's not an accident if you think about the ideas that both sides represent. It seemed to me that because like the mainstream was against Russia that they became pro Russia. I mean, that is true. It's not so much that the mainstream, so I need to end, but let me say this. This is the part of the, if you're against the left, then you're against everything the left does and Biden supported Ukraine said, must be wrong. By definition, it must be wrong if Biden did it. And if the mainstream media is reporting that Russia's losing, then they must be winning because everything the mainstream media says is exact opposite in reality and that's become a guiding mentality, a guiding way in which people deal with reality these days at least a certain segment of the world out there. So yes, so at some point they picked up that if you wanna fight the left, you have to be pro Russia. If you wanna fight mainstream media, you have to be pro Russia. And I think that stimulated the growth of them. All right, thank you everybody.