 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Friday, November 17th. Next week is Thanksgiving. I'm not sure what the schedule will be next week. I have to figure that out. You want to show on Thanksgiving? You want to show the night before Thanksgiving? Should we do it? Anyway, we'll figure it out. Not sure you want to hear the news on Thanksgiving. Why not just celebrate? It might take the day off. We'll see. Let's see. Are we going to have a full show today? Got a lot of stuff to cover. Remind everybody you can use the Super Chat to ask questions, to support the show, to provide value for value, et cetera. So please do that. Also want to remind you that the Iran Institute is a sponsor of the show. And in particular, they are highlighting the fountainhead right now, the fountainhead guidepost for young people in the world. In a world of very few guideposts, a confirmation of the spirit of youth. That's how she called the fountainhead. Absolutely. So we've got a huge influx of demand from young people requesting Iran books. One request every 20 minutes, hundreds every day. Really? Wow. On Tuesday, November 28th, we're celebrating the success in that, the inspiration of Iran's novel. Novels. So you can join us and join the Institute on Tuesday, November 28th, 2 p.m. Eastern time, where you'll hear about all the work that is involved in getting these books into the hands of young people and everything that Iran Institute is doing. You can find information about that, sign up, register. It's free, but you have to sign up. Iran.org, start here. Iran.org, slash start here. You can access all the information about this event. I hope you do that. All right. So let's see, where are we? So there's a conspiracy theory out there, one among gazillion others, but one that has had pretty horrific consequences already. And the conspiracy theory basically goes like this. It basically says the Jews in the United States want to bring illegal aliens, illegal migrants into the country. People from particularly immigrants from non-Western countries, non-white countries, and they want to bring them into the United States. And the purpose of all this is basically to, in a sense, destroy white America, to destroy whites, because Jews hate whites, and that they're trying to import all this into America, because out of a hatred of whites, and they want to destroy the white characteristics of the white nature of America. If you go on Twitter, you can find many, many, many people who are tweeting this conspiracy theory with quotes from people who are saying, you know, you know, you know, you're tweeting this conspiracy theory with quotes from Jews prominent or not so prominent, primarily not so prominent, talking negatively about white people and so on. I don't know, you know, I have no idea where these quotes come from. But they're there, and you can find them on Twitter all with the idea that Jews want to get rid of whiteness and they want to get rid of white people, and the whole illegal immigration into the United States is really just Jews, you know, just Jews going after white people. Some people take this stuff seriously. Indeed, Robert Bowers, you know, took it seriously as he walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 and started shooting people, shooting Jews and murdering 11 people. You know, he wrote a whole social media post, and he was basically there to protect us from these Jews who are bringing in invaders over our borders, over our borders in order to replace white people in America. This is part of Tucker Carlson's and others' replacement theory. It just replaced Democrats with Jews, but it's all the same kind of idea. Anyway, this idea was articulated in a post on Twitter by some anti-Semite, who I'm not gonna give the URL for. It was viewed by 1.2 million people, and this is the post, I'm quoting the post. Quote, Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. I'm deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about Western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don't exactly like them too much. So basically saying, yeah, Jews hate whites, they've encouraged hatred against whites as a consequence, they've encouraged migration of brown and black people into their countries, and now those black and brown people are turning against the Jews and he shows no sympathy towards that. So this is the anti-Semitic, explicitly anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. It is disgusting on so many fronts and the way it deals with immigrants and the way it treats immigrants, but even more so in the way it's talking about Jewish people, Jewish dialectic against whites. I mean, that's the Jewish community has been involved in that. I'm pretty stunning stuff. This is anti-Semitism 101 and I would have never talked about it because it's stupid and I wouldn't want to give it a platform on my show and I don't think it's that big of a deal out there. I don't think that that many people engaged in it other than the fact that Elon Musk tweeted in response to this, you have said the actual truth and that's the reason this tweet got 1.2 million views. Indeed, Elon Musk's retweet got 6.4 million views. So now Elon Musk is playing around with anti-Semitic slogans, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, anti-Semitic ideas. And nobody seems to care. Certainly nobody on the right is going to criticize him. Certainly Scott isn't going to criticize him. He's far too busy, worried about Taliban, whatever, to actually go after explicit anti-Semites because they're on the right and after all the right, they're our allies. They're against the left, so this is good. We should support them. These are the kind of people that promote hatred of Jews and at the same time promote so-called Western values. These people in the long run, in my view, are much more dangerous in terms of what they can do and what impact they would have. And yeah, this is the world in which we live. This is the world in which we live with the richest man in the world. A man admired by pretty much everybody on the right, a man that supposedly stands up for liberty and freedom in American way and free speech is expressing support for an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory and almost nobody says anything because who wants to go up against their long mask? This is how civilization disappears. This is how, yeah. This is how anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories like this become mainstream, become just like everything else, right? All right, so that is Musk. I added that in the end because I didn't want to talk about it, but in the end I had to. All right, quickly on TikTok. I talked yesterday quite a bit about TikTok and Bilal and all the videos that were put up. Well, there was a big outcry against TikTok here and a lot of people, I think, who have been supporting TikTok, not shutting it down in the United States, maybe people in Congress, maybe people outside, who knows what kind of pressure was brought to bear, but a lot of pressure was brought to bear against TikTok yesterday. And by yesterday evening, TikTok basically had taken down the hashtag on Bin Laden, on support of Bin Laden. They had taken down, all the videos about Bin Laden's letters, in support of Bin Laden's letters, they were trying to track down every semblance, everything connected to it. They shut down certain accounts that have seemed to have been opened only to promote. These are Bin Laden, the Bin Laden letter and the videos around Bin Laden. Basically, they have tried, and I don't know how successful they've been because many of these videos have been exported into other platforms, to basically eradicate TikTok from all of these pro-Bin Laden, Bin Laden was right videos. So I guess good for them. I think that's a good standard. I mean, I know there's some out there who think social media should just allow for anything to be posted. And mostly I agree with that, but again, the social media should, I think, have standards. I don't think they should be imposed by government. I don't think they should be going to anything like that. But TikTok, you know, not promoting Bin Laden is probably a good standard to have for these kind of things. So yeah, TikTok is taking it all down. So no fear. We've just saved our young generation. It doesn't change the fact that our generation is so susceptible to this. It doesn't change the fact that they're so easily turned against America and it turns against Israel in a turn and for the most nihilistic, barbarian, anti-American message possible. This is how maybe the West submits to Islam through these young people who will find value in Islam as compared to their nihilistic existence. More likely in the United States, they all become, you know, rabid Christians than they become rabid Muslims. I think that's where the takeover will come from. That's where the submission actually happens. That's where they will take a knee. But I just wanted to update you on the TikTok story. Ongoing story about Iran is that the Biden administration seems to be committed, you know, deeply committed, not just deeply committed, to keep the money flowing to Iran, to keep Iran well-funded so that Iran, I guess, can fund the terrorists so that Israel can destroy the terrorists, so the United States can give money to Israel and then give more money to Iran to fund to the terrorists is, I don't know, maybe the United States has kind of deal with Iran where Iran keeps the Hezbollah reined in and Iran doesn't attack Israel directly and in return, the United States will send them billions and billions and billions of dollars. But it does seem like the United States is clearly committed to the well-being of Iranian finances. The Biden administration is loosening or talking about loosening its, you know, restrictions on Iranian export of oil, a source of anywhere from 32 to 35 billion dollars, right? Since President Biden took office, Iran has brought in an additional 32 to 35 billion dollars because of oil exports and the high price of oil. The United States is, should be enforcing the law and the sanctions that they have, which means going after banks, purchasers, insurers, tankers, ports, and anybody who facilitates the trade in Iranian oil, and yet the United States is not. It is allowing the trade in oil for the Iranians to continue partially out of the fear, I guess, that all prices will go up and inflation will rise and people will feel bad and then they won't like Biden and then they'll vote him out and, but this is, this is so horrific and this has been going on forever. We keep appeasing our enemy, we keep funding our enemy. I mean, the Obama administration was the first administration to engage in this to the Trump administration's credit. They walked away from the Iranian nuclear deal, which was basically funding Iran by huge numbers and Obama had basically opened up the spigots for the Iranian economy to flourish. Trump walked away from it, but didn't completely and didn't bring the allies away with him so that Iran only faced some sanctions. Biden has retracted even more of those sanctions. It's just an unmitigated disaster and it goes back to the idea that I've been talking about forever, that the United States has no foreign policy, has no coherent strategy about how to deal with its enemies or have any concept of defining those enemies and actually going after them and doing anything about them. So it is so immoral and irrational. And if only the Republicans had a candidate that you could vote for to replace this idiot in the White House. I mean, he's not even an idiot anymore. He's just clueless. And of course, his State Department, which is manned with anti-American, anti-Israeli cardways, which are permanent bureaucrats. So they've been there for a long time and they will continue to be there until they're replaced. You know, it's just pro-Iranian State Department that is basically continuously supports the Iranian regime and by implication supports the Iranian regime, support for terror organizations. This administration is horrific and is destructive to American interests and destructive to Israeli interests and it should go as quickly as possible. But notice that nobody's talking about this. Nobody cares. Nobody actually criticizes them for the things that they do on the merits of it. They're far too busy investigating all kinds of BS, other things. And the fact that they're undermining American national security, the fact that they're supporting our enemies, nobody cares because that's not an issue anybody wants to raise. So I mean, it would be nice if there was an opposition party in America who actually went after the party in power, particularly when that party in power was constantly systematically undermining the interests of the United States. It would be kind of cool to have a two-party system instead of a system that has one party and then another party that's completely dysfunctional and irrelevant and navel-gazing and obsessed with a narcissistic idiot and going to position him. Idiot is too nice of a word. Moran and gonna position him as the leader of the party and its candidate for presidency. Go figure. All right, talk about Biden. Biden, as we know, met with Xi and they came up with all this stuff. Some of the headlines around this are somewhat entertaining because now everybody's convinced that because Biden met with Xi, the probability that China will invade Taiwan has gone down Xi said something like that. And of course it's complete nonsense. China is not gonna invade Taiwan and it's not gonna invade Taiwan for simple reason that it's worried that it can't win in Taiwan. It can't actually take Taiwan. It is concerned about that and that is a primary reason why it will not invade Taiwan. It does not, it can't afford, Xi cannot afford to take that risk right now. Now he's still building up in the military. He's very hopeful in one day being able to achieve that but it's just not realistic and I've said this for a long, long time that China is going to invade Taiwan anytime soon but if the Biden administration can take a little bit of credit by meeting with Xi that it won't happen then what the hell, why not? Just one other story, one other issue about Taiwan and then I wanna go back to Xi and that is that what China really wants to do with Taiwan is it wants to grind it down. It wants to influence its domestic policies. It wants to do to Taiwan what it did to Hong Kong slowly, systematically. It's investing huge amounts of money in Taiwan right now in an attempt to basically dominate or influence the elections that are coming up for Taiwanese president and parliament. They are constantly abhoraging social media and regular media in Taiwan with anti-American, anti-Western, anti-Taiwanese independence ideology and anti the current political party in charge of Taiwan which is relatively pro-independence. It won't actually come out and declare separation from China but it basically stands for that. It is trying to brainwash the Taiwanese people into acquiescence rather than go to war. It is an easier, smoother path and indeed this coming election I think in Taiwan that is January 13th is gonna be a really, really important election. Running are the vice presidents, the current vice president of Taiwan, the guy who is a physician and who was responsible for the unbelievably positive response of Taiwan to the COVID epidemic. He's an immunologist and sorry, epidemiologist and he is running for the, I guess the party that is in power right now. This is a political party that had one of its ministers was just responsible for de-regulation. I mean, so this is about as good as a political party you would get in the world in which we live. And it's gonna be against the opposition. Now the opposition was divided and was running several candidates. They have now announced that in order to increase the chances of them beating the political party that's now in power, they are going to unite, all of them unite around one candidate. And so that is what we're gonna see. We're gonna see a two man race in Taiwan. The opposition will all back one candidate and we'll have the candidate of the ruling party right now, the governing party right now. China is strongly supportive of the opposition. The opposition claims to want better relations with China but this is also a guise for, well maybe we can talk about what happens in the future by Taiwan and its integration into China or at least that's what the Chinese hope it means. And so it's an election to watch. It's coming up January 13th. I think China's far too focused on that right now to consider invading Taiwan. I doubt that they will after this no matter who wins but certainly if the opposition loses the Chinese will continue to increase pressure on Taiwan, try to make life in Taiwan as miserable as possible to try to encourage the Taiwanese people to come on over to the side of China and away from what China views as the biggest threat which is Chinese in true explicit independence. All right, finally I'd like to call out, call out America's CEOs, primarily America's CEOs in Silicon Valley but not just the Silicon Valley we might as well call out Boeing and call out Qualcomm, Qualcomm I think is in Southern California and I'm sure many, many other CEOs for their participation in the dinner honoring Xi. They all went there groveling before the dictator of China. A violator of human rights, of individual rights, an authoritarian, a destroyer of property rights. Not only did they go to this dinner where he was the keynote speaker in San Francisco but in addition to that they gave him three standing ovations. A standing ovation where he walks in and then a standing ovation when he said certain things during the speech. I think this is in the end a disgrace. Well, it's a disgrace that the Biden administration even invited him here but that is me being a radical and believing that the US president shouldn't meet with authoritarians like the brutal dictator of North Korea. Oh, that was Trump. All right, the brutal dictator of Russia and the brutal dictator of China. I don't believe that the US president should meet with any of those people but that's me with my crazy font policy but certainly there's no reason for all of these business leaders to go grovel before him. It's not like China could do without them. It's not like China doesn't depend on them more than they depend on China at the end of the day. Certainly they're behaving that way. They're behaving as if they need China. It's sad to see, it's sad that they're giving the standing ovations. It's pretty absurd. But there we go, that's the state of the world in which we live. All right, one quick international story just I think it's of some interest. You know, this ruling coalition in Germany, they've just proposed a budget. That budget included a shift of $60 billion from a COVID fund, from funds that were approved as emergency funds for COVID into a climate transition emergency fund. And the whole German budget was based on this. This is a lot of money. 60 billion euros is a lot of money. And I guess this week, the German constitutional court ruled in a shocking ruling that nobody expected, that it was unconstitutional for the government to take that 60 billion out of the COVID fund and put it into the climate change, climate transition change fund. And now the government is stuck. It has made all these promises about spending money, primarily on energy or lack of it, primarily in green projects on this green transition. It also has committed to subsidizing the chip industry. It's made commitments to subsidizing electric cars because Germany is falling way behind the Chinese in electric cars. It's got massive housing construction programs. It's got just huge environmental programs. And all of that was kind of depending on the 60 billion dollar euros. Now the 60 billion is over several years, but it's taking out a big chunk, 24 billion out of one year alone. What are they gonna do? They promise to increase minimum income for children. They promised subsidies for German companies to offset increased energy costs. So this is a real shockwave within the German government and within the German economy. Germany has also promised to increase its expenditures on the military. That doesn't look like it's gonna happen. And of course, Germany is in a recession, which doesn't help all this. So Germany economically is in real trouble and it's just 60 billion euro just taken away from it, which is good. It means they're gonna have to stop spending on crazy projects and on crazy subsidies. And maybe put their economy on an actual solid market footing. There's a concept for you. All right. Let's see. Yes, a positive story. Let's do a positive story. Haven't done those in a long time. All this backlash against universities, Ivy League universities, other universities are benefiting some of the disruptors and some of the startup universities out there. And I take primarily the one that gets the most press is the University of Austin in Texas. So the University of Austin in Texas. It is a university, if you remember, Barry Weiss was involved in it. Venture capitalist, Joe Lonsdale is one of its main financial backers, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Niall Ferguson, I and Hosea Lee's husband on the Board of Advisors. This is supposed to be a new approach to education and non-woke and you heard Greg on my show the other day say he was kind of disappointed when he talked to the president because it wasn't clear what exactly their vision was. But right now it's enough that they are an alternative to the Ivy Leagues to get people excited. So the university has been accredited. It has been given permission by the state of Texas to function as a university. Just like every other state university is a regulated in Texas. And it is starting to enroll students in the first undergraduate class that they hope will start in the fall of 2024. They're hoping for a hundred students. Those hundred students will be able to enroll tuition-free after that, tuition goes up to $32,000 a year. So that first class is, wow. I mean, that's a nice, it's nice to be able to have tuition-free. They're actively constructing the campus. It's in downtown Austin in a high-rise. It's not exactly a campus, but they are building with classrooms and common areas and they are building a university, an alternative university of the corrupt, Ivy League and the corrupt state universities that are all over the country where anti-Semitism is rampant and where people, a lot of people are finding that they maybe don't want to send their kids over there. So here we have a very exciting project. I mean, I hope it's successful. I hope they actually figure out what makes them unique, what makes them different, what it is that they want to do that's different from what has been done in the past. Barry Weiss tweeted, if you know high schoolers who are brilliant, ferociously independent and interested in building a university applications for University of Austin are now open. So look it up. If you know kids that are interested, if you're a parent, if you have kids that might be going to college in 2024, fall of 2024, I definitely, definitely, definitely think you should consider the University of Austin. It sounds interesting, it's fascinating. And yeah, it's in Austin, which is another great thing about it. It's in a great city. So I'm excited about this and I'm excited about the prospects for what it might do. I'm hoping, I'm hoping, hoping, hoping that they do something really radical and they create something really unique and they bring kind of the values. Fundamentally, what I'm hoping for is a university that respects the Enlightenment, a university that is geared towards Enlightenment values and Enlightenment principles and is going to promote Western civilization, which I believe is the Enlightenment and that's its focus, that avoids being categorized as right or left, that avoids religion, that just is focused on Enlightenment values, Western civilization values and so on. I'd even consider going and becoming a professor there if they offered me a job, who knows? All right, let's see, what else do we have? Oh, well, we're done. All right, that's all I had prepared. I'm sure you guys have a bunch of questions for me. So yes, let's open it up to the super chat, any questions you might have, I'm happy to answer. You can use the super chat to do it. I saw somebody here asked a first time question. Yeah, Joseph, first time super chat. I thank you, Joseph. We'll get your question in a minute. All right, but let's, well, maybe I'll start with his because his question is really good. Joseph says, I've never super chatted but you're offering me a value, I am. I'm offering all of you all 113 people watching live right now, I value. Long story, but I was frustrated with the objectives community. October 7th brought me back to listening to your show. You're on fire, thank you. I appreciate it, Joseph. I'd be curious sometime if you told me why you were frustrated with the objectives community. My intention is to remain on fire and this is gonna be a long battle. It's not gonna go away and we're battling the entire world. It seems we are the smallest of minorities actually advocating for reason, nevermind egoism and capitalism and I will continue in that advocacy for as long as I can. For as long as I can, thank you for the support to all of you. So yeah, so you can offer value for value using a sticker, using a question. However you wanna do it, but you can do it here live or you can do it by supporting me monthly on Patreon, Subscribestar or PayPal. You're on bookshow.com slash support. All right, Daniel says, have you watched Jordan Peterson's comment on Ayn Rand in his recent podcast? I have not, I have not. I didn't know he had mentioned her, but how is it that he's read out and shrugged multiple times but still gets Rand's ideas so wrong conflating self-interest with hedonism and other errors? Because he can't grasp it. He comes to reading Ayn Rand and with a context that is, you know, a particular philosophical context and he's not willing to abandon that philosophical context. So he reads into her his own philosophy and the stance in the context of his own philosophy and since his morality is so explicitly Christian, if you will, and he says there is no morality without Christianity, in a sense, or there is no morality without a God, he can't really comprehend what he's saying and it comes across to him as just silly, superficial and at the end of the day, he's just hedonistic. And so he just can't see it. He likes Atlas Shrug because it presents a world dominated by, from his perspective, the left. It presents a world dominated by what, you know, his perspective is a collectivism, to the extent he even understands what collectivism is and I think he only has a partial understanding of it. And so he likes it for those reasons. He also likes it because it presents a world in which there's a hierarchy. So he definitely likes the idea that some people produce more than others. Some people carry the world on their shoulders. There's a sense in which he really likes that. He likes the Atlas analogy. I think he likes the idea of achievement and merit. That's his credit. He's not an egalitarian. He rejects egalitarianism. That is to his credit, right? So he likes that idea and I think he genuinely likes Atlas Shrug but he cannot, cannot comprehend and cannot, cannot go and understand and into the depth of a philosophy because his philosophy is, you know, counter to everything that I believe and here I'm talking not about his ethics but his metaphysics and epistemology. And no, he didn't, I don't know what he said. I have no idea what he said. Everything I say about Jordan Peterson is my understanding of him. And if you can't interpret another intellectual, then there's nothing to do, Scott. Then, you know, if an intellectual doesn't say something explicitly, you can't attribute anything to them. You can't express how you think they came to that position. I mean, that is nutty and surprising, Scott. So, yeah, so it's not surprising to me, you know, and if you watch Jordan Peterson, if you listen to Jordan Peterson, you know how far removed he is philosophically, particularly, again, in metaphysics and epistemology from Ayn Rand and why that prevents him from comprehending his ethics. All right, Scott asks, when you say Tucker Carlson is a bigger threat than Tlaib, are you saying you'd prefer Tlaib over Tucker if they ran each other for Congress? Let me ask you, Scott, if Hitler and Stalin were running, who would you vote for? Are you saying, you know, that, I don't know, if Hitler's worse than Stalin, does that mean you would vote for Stalin if you would prefer Stalin when if they were running for the same seat in Congress? God, I mean, again, as I've told you many times, some people cannot think other in dualities. You've got A and B, and those are the only two options. Yeah, Tlaib isn't Stalin. Tucker isn't Hitler, and Tlaib isn't Stalin. But they both represent those attitudes, and in that sense, I wouldn't vote for either of them. I have no preference. But in the sense of how I think the long run United States, who poses a bigger threat, Tucker Carlson does, for the same reason that, you know, Lenin Peacock describes him dim. I think the misintegration of religion with nationalism is a bigger threat to the United States long term than the disintegration of the left. I just don't think WALK will ever woo America. How do you know what Peacock thinks of what he's voting, and the fact that Peacock is voting GOP, what does that even mean? So every time Peacock says something that Scott agrees with, he is going to use, he's gonna turn to authority to tell us what to think, right? And every time Peacock says something Scott disagrees with, he's gonna say, well, Peacock's sometimes wrong. Scott knows how Peacock sees dim, exactly he knows. He's had long discussions with Lenin Peacock about dim. Now I don't pretend to know exactly, you know, to interpret dim exactly correctly. I don't know that I do, I don't. But I'm not saying dim is vote for Democrats. I didn't say vote for Talibe. I said that Tucker Carlson represents the biggest threat to America. Then Talibe, Talibe would never be voted president of the United States of America. Carlson could be. Therefore, who's the biggest threat? Talibe might be more nihilistic than Tucker Carlson, but Talibe could never be president. So I would take a less power to a lesser evil than more power, no, less power to a greater evil than more power to a lesser evil, if she is more evil than Tucker Carlson. And if you don't get that, again, you are, you are, you know, you are leading us straight towards hell. That's what those of you who want to align yourself with Tucker Carlson want. I wouldn't vote in that election, as I don't vote in many elections. There are people who are so evil, I will never vote for them, even if the other person is even more evil than them. There's a limit to the lesser of two evils. And you know, if you want to go for authorities, Iran was a pretty good authority on that one. All right, Andrew says, an inference that can be made from Candace Owens' criticism of Ben Shapiro, is since he's emotional about Israel Gaza, he therefore is not being rational. What is your answer to that type of criticism? Well, I mean, it's an absurd criticism. You can be passionate about something and then, of course, be completely rational about it. Candace Owens is being emotional and passionate about certain things. I don't think she's particularly rational in anything, but I don't think it's the emotion that signifies that she's being irrational. She is very calm about a lot of things, super calm about a lot of things where she's super irrational. And you can see that in many, many irrational people who are. So the fact that you're passionate does not indicate that you're rational or irrational. It doesn't indicate anything about the argument that you make. The question is what is the quality of the argument? What are the references in reality that your argument is related to? Is it related to reality? Is it rational in the sense of engaging in logic or isn't it? And if it is not, then it doesn't matter how much passion you bring, you don't, it's irrational. And if it is, then it's rational no matter how much emotion you convey when talking about it. Andrew, in a rational world, would American presidents meet one-on-one with President Xi? No, no, I said that. He wouldn't, I mean, I don't think he should. I think it's a huge mistake. But in the world in which we live where American presidents pretty much will meet with anybody, it's not surprising, right? And look, if the Armit was Stalin, Trump danced with the sheiks, Obama bowed to the sheiks, Biden went and groveled to the sheiks, and Trump inhaled by many of Trump's fans, inhaled for his meanings with the murdering butcher of North Korea. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, a rational world is far, far, far from what we have. Bradley says, was Musk's idea of conspicuous kindness to Palestinians by Israel selfish and their long-term interest encounters Hamas plan? I don't understand, this is not, I don't know, it needs some punctuation. Was Musk's idea of conspicuous kindness to Palestinians by Israel? Selfish and in their long-term interests. It counters Hamas's plan of getting the uneducated mob to pull Israeli support, democracy empowers you rational people. I don't quite understand the question, but I don't believe that one should be conspicuously kind to bad actors. I don't think one should be conspicuously kind when one is defending oneself. I don't think it's in your long-term self-interest. I think it emboldens the bad guys. It makes them stronger. I think what actually is a winning strategy is a complete devastation and humiliation of your enemy, getting them down on their knees to beg for forgiveness. That is what ultimately brings peace in the long run. That's what worked in Japan, that's what worked in Germany. That's what worked everywhere where there's long-term peace. It's subjugation, one side subjugating, in other words, defeating, thoroughly defeating the other side. I don't think kindness in war ever works. I don't think, so I don't think Musk's cue is articulating a strategy that is in the long-term self-interest of Israel or anybody else in the West. Bradley says, do you think tribalism manifests differently between the sexes? Women face ostracization if they don't fit in, but if men don't, the hostility is more explicit and physical. You know, I don't know, I think that's true today, that the way tribalism manifests itself is different between the sexes. There's differences between the sexes. Part of them are biological and part of them are social and cultural. And I do think, you know, when it comes to tribalism, men and women come together in different ways. Some men, I guess, are more explicit and more physical. Women are more quiet about it and it's more emotional and manipulative. Men, it's more, you know, not sophisticated enough to mostly manipulate. They're more brute force kind of. I mean, I think that's true, it's a stereotype, but it's true for most people. And certainly, I think that is what people refer to when they are tribalistic and when they are on the conceptual level. But I wouldn't make too much of it because I don't think it applies to any particular, any specific individual cases or individuals that need to be evaluated and judged on their own merits. Any questions you wanna ask me and you can ask me anything, please use the super chat to do so. I don't ask the questions that are just in the chat itself. We've got $86 to go to get to our goal. We've got 129 people watching live, so it should be easy to get to our goal, maybe even exceed it. We've only got those three questions left, so we're gonna be done here very shortly. So if you'd like to support the show, either through a sticker, like Fred Hopper just did with $20 and Geff 37 did and let's see who else I need to thank. Gail I need to thank and John Parker I need to thank who all have done stickers to support the show. You can do so too to get as close to the goal or you can ask a question. There's still time to ask questions so we can get to that goal. Kim A says, since you said that business leaders shouldn't meet with Xi, do you think they shouldn't do business in China either? What if the shareholders want them to? No, I don't think necessarily they shouldn't do business in China. I mean, I think that's a different calculation that needs to be made about whether to do business in China or whether to go in and kind of hobnob with the Chinese leader. There might be reasons in which trading with Chinese makes sense and you're willing to take on the risks involved in doing business in China. But you might want to distance yourself from sanctioning the Chinese regime explicitly by giving a standing ovation to Xi. I think the idea of the whole notion of doing business in China, particularly today is very complicated. It's very complex, particularly given that so many companies are already doing business in China, it's very difficult to leave and very costly to leave. But I definitely think companies should be ready to leave, should have plans to leave, should think through how to leave because if this regime gets much worse, then I think it's absolutely necessary for them to leave to leave China. Just some PhD, just some physics students, student. He says, long time view off from Denmark here. I am a student, broke clearly, graduate student, soon going on exchange to San Francisco, Berkeley, excellent. How was it when you first came to the US, what shocked you most? Oh wow, good question. You're going to San Francisco, so it'll be very different, but I went to Texas. What shocked me most was how religious people were. It was surprising, I was coming from Israel and yet Americans were so much more religious in day to day stuff than Jews were in Israel. If you've never been to America, I don't know. I mean, I think in San Francisco what shocked you is how crazy leftist nihilists they are. I think what was shocked you about San Francisco are the homeless people and the disregard for private property. But if you're in Berkeley, you'll be shocked by the hippies, by the homeless people and just how left, the university's not very left. Most of the students in the university are not left, but there is a cadre, a minority of students that are very left and I think in that sense, much worse than what you see in Denmark and much more nihilistic than what you would see in Denmark. By the way, that is just some physics students first, super chat contribution. Thank you just, so yeah, $66 left. We've got 127 people watching live, so you do the math and how much money we need from each one of you to break the thing. But anyway, this is the last question, unless somebody asks something else. David Asano, thank you for the $20. Really, really appreciate it. Andrew Chayga says, how close are you to the point of writing off Musk morally? I mean, you know, there's a large extent I've already done that, right? But what does it mean to write somebody off morally? Do I think Musk engages in moral activity? Sure, absolutely. I think he is consciously, purposefully evading much of his politics. I think almost all of his political stance, his political views, invovivation and he's being immoral about it. Is he to the level of evil that I want to have nothing to do with him? No, and he gets a lot of credit for the fact that he is not evasive and he's in some of his business activities, but even there, right? I mean, he did take subsidies and built a company around subsidies, right? Particularly Tesla, not a big fan of Tesla. So, you know, I'm not that impressed. I mean, sometimes I have been because I think that his emotionalism sometimes leads him to do and say good things. His fist, when he said about the regulators, what are they gonna do about Starlink, you know, wave his fist to the sky. I thought that was fantastic, but now I look back at it and say, yeah, it was fantastic, but it was more, you know, his, it was more an emotionalist outburst that it was a thought out principle that he had about freedom and about regulation and about, you know, what that all entails. So I'm not, you know, so yeah, there's a sense and we should have written them up, but I've written a lot of, you know, look, I believe in morally judging people. So I think lots of people are immoral, in a sense, to commit immoralities, but they're degrees and they're levels of how you treat them. I mean, there are plenty of people on this chat who I think are immoral just based on my interactions with them, I can tell. They're evasive, they are veiding, they're dishonest and uncrucial things that, you know, I haven't written them off completely, but clearly that is the case. So, you know, I think Elon is this mixed bag of brilliant and genius and focus and then complete lack of focus and complete evasion and complete drifting and doing things in that state of drift. I don't know if that he regrets afterwards or not, but that he should regret. So he's like many people out there is a complex character. He's a difficult character to fully understand and, you know, fully comprehend, but he's not a hero in his, certainly in his politics. He might be a hero in his business as a businessman and Starlink is amazing and a lot of what he's done is amazing, but in his politics and that's what's been revealed by Twitter, yeah, he's just not that impressive. He's more impulsive, more emotional than anything else, right? So you can be, you can have a mixture. You can be a genius and look at Oppenheimer, right? He was a genius. He made it possible to build the atomic bomb. He made it possible for America to win the war with Japan with minimal casualties and he was a communist, probably, very, very likely, right? Communist, card member, card carrying member of the Communist Party. People are mixed and Elon Musk is definitely unbelievably mixed. Robert says, even the most insular nationalist should be able to see that American citizens were murdered on October 7th. The American citizens are being held hostage. This is our war. Well, no, because these are American citizens that are dual citizens, and I've been accused of this, right, by being dual citizens that are really committed to America. They're not really Americans. They have dual alliances and really, by living in the United States and going to waves in the United States, they've shown that their real commitment is to Israel and not to America. Indeed, they are traitors to the American cause and therefore should be abandoned by the American government because, I mean, that's exactly how they think. You should see how many comments I get. Ooh, you're on, he's a dual citizen and you know, we know where his real alliance is. We know what he really believes in. I don't think there, I think there are many people out there on Twitter that don't consider me a real American, right? A real American. And Jews generally, and part of this conspiracy is real Jews, American Jews want to destroy America, so Jews who live in Israel, who want to destroy America, I mean, why should we care about them? Yeah, you see, Robert, the world is in much worse shape than even you think it is. And I am here to show you that every day, every day that the world is so much worse, so much worse. All right, by the way, this replacement theory, this Jewish conspiracy, this idea that Jews are bringing them in from outside in order to destroy the white people, this is something Tucker Carlson has promoted as well. So this is becoming a part of the right. It's becoming a part of the right and this is the way Scott wants you to support and Scott wants you to embrace and to form a big tent to fight the evil left. All right, we have one more question. Andrew says, agree on musk, but for me, the singling out of Jews is a new level of immorality. Also, thanks to this point, people are calm and wrong all the time. So why would passion be associated with wrongness? Yeah, I mean, there's a sense in which people think reason versus emotion, but it's not reason versus emotion, it's reason versus unreason. And there are lots of different ways you can unreason. Lots of different ways you can unreason. All right, thank you guys. I will see you all tomorrow. 3 p.m. east coast time, I think it's, no, sorry, 2 p.m. east coast time, tomorrow, 2 p.m. east coast time, we'll have a show, not exactly what I'm gonna do tomorrow. I've got a number of ideas that I'm kicking around. If anybody has a good idea, something they wanna keep me on fire, I need to stay on fire, you know, let me know. So it'll be, I'm not sure, I've gotta, yeah, I'm still thinking through. But tomorrow, 2 p.m. east coast time, we'll do one of our long shows. Please join me and yeah, have a great weekend, everybody. I hope you have a great rest of your Friday. Have a great weekend in spite of all this bad news, in spite of all the shit in the world. You know what I'm gonna do? Here's, I'm gonna make a commitment right now. I'm gonna start up again the wrong rules for life series in some form or another. Because I don't know if we'll call it that, we'll call it something else. I'm open to suggestions on what I call it. Because the reality is we need some positive shows, right? We need some positive values. We need to talk about some positive things. We can't just, you know, it's depressing. It's depressing to do it. It must be depressing for you to listen to. And I know I'm getting more views and many more of you are showing up to these shows because I'm on fire, because I'm criticizing and attacking. And I get that, but maybe I can use the opportunity of more of you showing up to the shows to actually do some positive shows and to talk about some positive ideas. So maybe we'll dedicate one of the weekly shows in the evening to a positive show every week. I have to think about, do I have anything to say, right? So what we can do is maybe, you know, I don't know, do you guys care if I repeat myself, right? Because it's not like I have new rules. It's like Robert is very supportive of this rules for life. Voltage has came in with a little bit of money to support it as well. So, yeah, I need to think about how to do positive. I don't know about positive news bulletins, because then you get into the news and very positive. It's very difficult. I try to come up with a few positive because like I did today with the University of Boston, but it's hard, and I'll try to do that more. I'll try to bring in more of those, but it's hard when you talk about the news to be overly positive, given everything, but maybe I can do something that is just a show that's explicitly positive. I see that's excited Andrew and it's excited Ian, so that's good. All right, guys, I will see you all tomorrow and yeah, if anybody has some ideas and topics for positive shows and things like that, let me know and we will be done. The other news I have for you guys is I am serious, it looks like I will be starting a show in Hebrew once every two weeks in Hebrew for the Israeli market to see if we can create a following in Israel. So that'll be a project that I'm gonna start up in maybe next week, we'll see. All right, Bradley says, do you think most people overestimate the power of others have over them? Yes, definitely, definitely. People way overestimate the power of others have over there after the value of other people to them and how much they are beholden to other people, and yes, people are way underestimate the amount of agency they have over their own lives and to give too much of that agency to other people. Thank you guys, we made a goal. Again, you guys are great, thanks to all the super chatter. Thank you, John. Thank you, yeah, I think everybody else. See you all tomorrow. Bye everybody, have a great weekend.