 So radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Friday. Happy Friday everybody. I hope you had a fantastic weekend looking forward to a great weekend. All right, we're going to jump right in. You know, battles in the Gaza Strip continue. If anything, they seem to get this week in particular, the battles are being in particular fierce. One gets the impression that Hamas is kind of being put into a corner. They have no option but to come out and fight. We're also seeing hundreds of them surrender. Israel is taking a lot of prisoners of war, I guess you would call them. But Hamas is also fighting, so there is intense battles on the ground between Israeli troops and Hamas. Of course, because Hamas lives inside the tunnels, it is almost impossible to just get rid of them from the air. So this requires kind of face-to-face battles. Israel has taken quite a few casualties. There have been quite a few traps set by Hamas for the Israelis. And some senior officers were killed earlier in the week. So it's been a tough week, but Israel continues to make progress. That is, in hundreds of Hamas fighters are being killed as well as again being taken prisoner. I assume this kind of fighting is going to continue. As I told you when this started, Gaza is a very dense place with homes and apartment buildings and structures built one on top of the other, one next to each other. It is very difficult to maneuver. It is very difficult to maneuver ground troops and tanks and everything else. Again, some of the flattening can be done from the air, but those tunnels are still there. Israel continues to destroy the tunnels, but the hundreds of kilometers of tunnels, and it's going to be a while. So this war is not going to end quickly. It's going to take weeks, months, at least at some level. The Biden administration, of course, is putting huge pressure on Israel to slow things down, to spare civilians, which means stop fighting, to stop bombing from the air, and to turn this operation into more kind of a pinprick operation, which will only deal with Hamas elements when they're identified on a localized basis. But this is, of course, a way to guarantee that Israel does not achieve its aim, the aim of destroying Hamas completely. That requires a real war. And that requires the kind of action that Israel is engaged in here, but the Biden administration, while saying they completely support America, they're putting huge amount of pressure publicly in public statements. And personally, Sullivan was in Israel, Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor was in Israel, to put that pressure on personally. And what the U.S. wants are narrow, targeted operations against Hamas leaders. What Israel wants is a complete destruction of the infrastructure, the leadership, and the troops. They want to destroy Hamas, not just to kill a few leaders and call it a day. But the United States doesn't get it. We'll get to some other areas where the United States doesn't get it. This administration is doing what it can to handcuff Israel. Israel committed to allowing humanitarian aid from Egypt into Gaza through Egypt, and it committed to 200 trucks a day. Again, I think a huge compromise that was unjustified. I've seen lots of videos that show that that aid has all been going to Hamas. Some of it goes to the population, most of it goes to Hamas. Anyway, it turned out that because of the security concern that Israel reviews, checks every truck that enters, it's very slow going. And the place where, in Egypt, where they're transporting trucks into Gaza can only handle about 100 a day. So in order to deal with that, and here you get Israel again compromising for the sake of the Biden administration, Israel has agreed to open up one of the checkpoints in its border between Gaza and Israel, and for the trucks to go through there, or another 100 trucks a day, to go through there so it can fulfill its 200 trucks of aid a day. So Israel is now literally being a transport hub for aid into Gaza, basically aid to its enemy while it is fighting a war with that enemy. It really is, you know, the absurdity and the craziness of all of this is harder phantom. It's almost science fiction-like. It is completely, anyway, completely self-sacrificial. You're fighting a war. You're supplying troops. This is the way America fights wars, and by the way, loses them, and has lost almost every war it's fought this way, or has lost every single war it's fought this way. Israel has been adapting the American style of warfare for the last 30 years, and that continues here again under intense pressure from the Biden administration. One of the claims being made, and you'll see this in various newspapers, the claims that Israel doesn't care about the civilian population is that about half the bombs that have been dropped in Gaza are what are called dumb bombs. They're not guided bombs. Israel does not use unguided bombs in that sense. While the bombs are unguided, they're all guided, ultimately. What happens when they use the non-guided bombs, the less sophisticated bombs, the bombs that don't by themselves thread themselves through a window, is that pilots engage in a maneuver where they dive very low to the ground and release the bombs very low to the ground. The bombs hit their targets. Israel is not carpet bombing Gaza, and you could argue it should, but it's not copying bombing Gaza, even when so-called dumb bombs are being used. They're being used as precision weapons, and they're used with precision. Israel's been using guided bombs and threading bombs through windows and destroying particular places in very crowded urban areas for decades. Israel knows how to do this. Its Air Force is master at this. We did this in the early 1980s. That's how early, even before the U.S. showed what guided bombs could do in its war with Iraq in 1991. Israel was already doing it in the 1980s. This is just horrible journalism to paint Israel as uncaring when Israel is probably fighting one of the most bomb-dropped, I don't know how you measure these things, per time span. Fewer civilians are dying in Gaza than pretty much in any other war in an urban location. Certainly this doesn't compare to what Assad did to his own people in Syria, or what the Russians did to Syrians in Syria, or what the Saudis did in Yemen, or what the U.S. did in Iraq. This is probably, and again on a capita basis, on a bomb basis, the safest war ever for civilians. It's brutal. A lot of civilians are dying because Hamas is usually using them as human shields, and it's human shields, and there's just no way to avoid that. You want to stop this, stop Hamas. Of course, there is the question whether all this effort should be engaged in, but that's for a different show. Other aspects of the war, there have been more and more reports now that the Houthis, the Houthis are a Shiite faction in Yemen who have been fighting a civil war in Yemen with the Yemenite government, which is Sunni, and that government is backed by Saudi Arabia. The Houthis are funded and supported by Iran, and they've been fighting a civil war for control of Yemen for years now. At the beginning of the Israel-Palestinian war, hate calling it Israel-Hamas war, because Hamas is the government of Gaza, so it's the Israel-Gaza slash Palestinian war. At the beginning of the Israel-War in Gaza, the Houthis launched a barrage of drones and missiles towards southern Israel. Basically, all of those drones and missiles have been either landed in the middle of nowhere or shut down by a defense system, primarily Israeli, but US shut down a few of those. So they switched tactics. And the tactic now is to try to stop shipping along the Red Sea, not just shipping going to Israel, but shipping along the Red Sea. And they have attacked several boats and several ships, including over the last 72 hours, they've attacked a couple of ships. And as a consequence, they basically achieved what they set out to do. That is, the port of Elat in the southern tip of Israel is not basically empty. Boats are not traveling to the port. It boats from Asia who are either traveling to Israel or traveling to Europe are now not traveling through the Red Sea into the Suez Canal. They're going around the Horn of Africa, which adds three weeks and huge amounts of costs. So the Houthis have actually succeeded into a large extent shutting down shipping along one of the most crucial lanes of shipping in the world. That is, the lane that carries goods from Asia to Europe, to Africa, to Israel, but primarily to Europe. So I suppose one of the ships attacked over the last 48 hours was a Chinese ship, so they're not even discriminating in terms of whose ships they were attacking. But they have managed to shut it down. The United States has a significant presence in the region. It has destroyers in the region. Of course, it has troops and an aircraft in the Gulf. It has troops and aircraft in Saudi Arabia and in Qatar and elsewhere in the region. It has an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. We'll get to that aircraft carrier in a minute. And the US is basically doing nothing. The US Navy, which is kind of one of its roles globally, has been secure shipping in the world, and in particular it has been responsible for securing shipping around this part of the Indian Ocean and into the Red Sea and into the Persian Gulf. The American Navy is basically doing nothing. These are the Houthis. This is a pipsqueak, nothing military force that can't even win a war in Yemen. This wouldn't require the US to put ground troops in Yemen. No, I mean, that would be horrible. All this would require is a steady bombardment of the Houthis from the air or from ships offshore. The United States has the capacity, cruise missiles and others, to basically wipe out the Houthis if they so chose, but at least to wipe out their military capabilities to shoot rockets at ships or at least make it costly for them. But the US is doing nothing so far. Now, they claim that they're coordinating an international presence of ships in this part of the world that would include, I guess, British and French and other that will defend and protect the ships. But the reality is that only the United States can and I think has the capabilities to actually deploy significant force here. The United States and to play defensive in terms of just trying to shoot these missiles out of the air, there's too much sea there to be able to protect every ship. You're just not going to be able to achieve this without actually bombing Yemen. Now, the idea is that the Navy ships in the area will cause the Houthis not to use force, but it's bizarre to just let them get away with it. It's just weird. Now, Israel itself has decided not to take military action at the moment against the Houthis because it's busy in Gaza and does not want to distract the IDF. I don't believe them. This is not a big distraction for the IDF. It would not be the same people and there's no, what is the risk? The Houthis are going to what? Are they going to come to Israel and attack it? I mean, Yemen is far away. There's absolutely no reason why Israel should not be launching planes and launching cruise missiles, and given the Houthis have declared war on Israel by attacking it directly with missiles and now attacking ships, there's no question in my mind that the only reason Israel is not attacking the Houthis is because the United States has told them to back off and has told them not to. So again, the U.S. is just appeasing. It's just projecting weakness. This weakness and this appeasement will play out in direct attacks in the United States. It will play out in real damage for the United States. This will not end. Appeasement never ends nicely or pleasantly well. This is going to really hood the United States. I mean, the U.S. has an envoy in Yemen and the discussion and the debating, but this is pathetic. This is pathetic. The mightiest military force in all of human history standing down in front of the Houthis in the face of the Houthis of Yemen, even more pathetic. I don't know how much credence to give to this because this strikes me as Iranian propaganda, but there is a video out there claiming to be from the Iranian Republican God of footage that reportedly is showing the Iranian national Republican God directing U.S. Navy out of the Persian Gulf. Now, I find that completely unlikely. The video depicts the Iranian Republican God dictating terms to the U.S. Navy resulting in the prompt landing of helicopters in the Eisenhower aircraft carrier and its subsequent exit from the region. I mean, if that's true, then it's all over, guys. Then might as well just convert to Islam and enjoying the Islamic Revolution. I mean, if the United States wants to stand up to the dinky Iranian Republican God, I don't know what's left. My assumption here is, and maybe I'm wrong, but my assumption here is that the ships are leaving, if American ships are leaving the Persian Gulf, they're leaving in order to beef up presence around the Red Sea, where the Houthis are, and maybe the U.S. wants to put an aircraft carrier so that it has the ability to short-range, you know, basically attack the Houthis. I mean, the video shows the Iranians in speedboats, in little boats kind of intimidating the United States, but just the fact that news like that is reported, that that goes out there, that people take it seriously. And it's just, I can't express how absurd and ridiculous this American weakness and this projection of weakness actually is, and how absurd and pathetic America looks and is, given all of this. Finally, again, in kind of our Israel war update, seven people have been arrested in Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands over suspicions over a terrorist plot. You know, of the seven people, four are highly likely to be affiliated with Hamas. The other three are also Islamists. All of them were planning terrorist attacks against Jewish targets within Europe. So again, Germany, Denmark, and Netherlands. And I expect to see a lot more stories like this. I'm sure there's no question about this, that internal security forces in Europe on heightened alert for terrorist attacks against Jewish and Israeli sites, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw more arrests, including in places like Belgium, which has a high population of Muslims and many of them radicalized France and even the UK. So yes, I mean, Europe is going to become, at the margin, more dangerous for particularly for Jews and Israelis to be traveling to. It is, there's a lot of sympathy among radicalized or Islam massized Muslims for Hamas. And whenever you see a terrorist organization like ISIS, and it's time be successful, what you see is a rise in terrorist attacks in places like Europe and the United States to kind of out of this sense of confidence that Islam is winning, God is on our side, Allah is with us. And it's only when they're defeated and thoroughly crushed that that goes away. So Israel needs to get on with it. And the faster Israel wins this, the faster Israel crushes and destroys Hamas, the safer Europe becomes, the safer America becomes. It works exactly the opposite. The tougher you are, the tougher you are, the less terrorism there is, the more appeasing you're seeing, the weaker you are, the more terrorism skyrockets. This is very well documented. All right, some news from an American university. We haven't talked about American universities in a while. This one, a small university, but I think highly regarded. Abilene University. This is a university that I think we've talked about in a previous show, maybe during the Gold's Revolution in Iran. Abilene University has a professor by the name of Muhammad Jaffa Mahalati. Muhammad Jaffa Mahalati used to be Iran's ambassador to the United Nations under the Islamist regime. He is also called for the elimination of Israel and has supported the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie, a Fatwa that was acted on, if you remember, was it last year where Salman Rushdie lost an eye and lost some movement in one of his arms. So here's a professor at an American university who worked for the Iranian regime, calls for the eradication of Israel, publicly, not hiding this, called for the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie, which is violence against somebody residing in the United States. Rushdie might even be a citizen by now of the United States. And on top of that, many Iranian dissidents have claimed that he was part of covering up the murder of 5,000 Iranian political dissenters. None of that, which has all been known for years, none of that. And by the way, him supporting the Iranian regime during the Gold's Revolution, but that's a minor thing. None of that really has bothered Abilene. Abilene has no problem with that. They kept him on staff, he kept on teaching. That is not an issue. You can call for the eradication of Israel. You can support the Iranian regime. You can even be responsible for covering up the murder of 5,000 dissidents. None of that is all calling for a Fatwa and Rushdie. None of that is a problem according to the administrators at Abilene universities. But he's just being suspended. Not for any of that. No, no, God forbid. No, no, that's all good. American universities are 100% supportive of all of that, violence against Israelis and against apostates like Salman Rushdie and violence against, I don't know, Iranian dissenters, they're fine with that. But what they're not fine with, what they are not fine with is accusation of sexual misconduct that is beyond the pale. Not even just accusations. It turns up that in 1997, that's a long time ago, in 1997, when he was at Columbia University, another bastion of American liberalism in the sense of classical liberalism, liberalism and defender of individual rights. In 1997 at Columbia University, he allegedly bribed a student to have sex with him in exchange for good grades. Now, I thought everybody at Ivy League at good universities get good grades, so she must have been really failing. Anyway, he basically gave her good grades in exchange for sex, something that unfortunately happens probably more often than you can believe at universities. Even I was propositioned once by a student who wanted, I don't know, wanted an A instead of a B minus if I remember right. He tried to get out of it, out of the accusation at the time by claiming diplomatic immunity, that's a good one. But he ultimately settled the case, ultimately settled the case. Maybe the Iran paid him money. Anyway, that, this having sex with a student for grades from 1997, that has got him suspended. None of the other accusations. Talk about a dead culture. Talk about a culture with no self-esteem. Talk about universities that are, God, finished. I don't know, universities that just are gone. What's one saying? I've got a little problem here. Let me see if I can fix it. Otherwise we'll try something else. All right, so that is kind of, I don't know, one part of the state of one part of the world. But that is, that is where we are. Oberlin College, don't send your kids there. This is not a good sign in terms of what these college stands for and whatever presents and what is, what is possible. All right, let me just see. Copy, paste. Let's see if this will actually make it work or not. Yeah, maybe. All right, let's see. All right, so EU and Ukraine, interesting. Again, I mean, the world is just nuts. Anyway, you might know that the EU, when it makes decisions, has to make decisions unanimously. That's part of, part of the deal with the EU. They have 27 countries. If a country votes no, then whatever it is that's being proposed loses, it's out, it's finished, gone. Right. So anyway, the EU is right now yesterday. I think it was yesterday, maybe it was today. Two propositions before it. One was the beginning of the process of admitting Ukraine into the European Union. And here making a significant exception, because Ukraine is at a state of war, which is usually you can't enter the EU if you're in a state of war. Hungary, Orban from Hungary, basically went into their meeting, this meeting saying, I'm going to veto everything. I don't want the Ukraine in the EU, and I don't want anything to do with them. It turned out, though, that Orban doesn't want to piss off the EU too much. Orban, the hero of the new right, the hero of conservatives, the hero of people like Tucker Carlson, doesn't want to piss off the EU while at the same time wanting to stand up for Vladimir Putin, his idol. So why doesn't he want to piss off the EU? Well, basically, he doesn't want to piss off the EU because Hungary as an economy is completely subsidized by the European Union. People don't talk about this, but Hungary is a failed economy. It's got higher inflation than the rest of the EU. It's got lots of economic problems, and it basically survives and grows its GDP based on money that comes in from the EU. And I think he was basically told if you vote against Ukraine coming in, we will stop, we will hold back some of the money. Now, the EU is already holding back some money from Hungary because of it doesn't stand up to its standards on media independence, on basic and freedom. So he walked out of the meeting, thus not voting no, but not voting yes. And the proceedings to admit Ukraine have started. Now, this could take years, it will take years, and Obama can veto it at a number of different points into the future. But yeah, but the EU better would hold funds in order to bribe him into voting the right way. But then, Obama turned around and vetoed another decision, and that is aid to Ukraine. It was a $60 billion bill to provide assistance to Ukraine in its war with Russia. This one, I think, Obama felt like he had to vote against in order to appease again his idol Putin. Putin might have been mad at him if he'd voted yes, so it walked out. So for right now, Ukraine is not going to get European aid from either the United States or Europe because Orban disagrees and because Republicans disagree. Now, I'll make a prediction that the aid will go through both from Europe and the United States. I've been saying that with regard to the United States for a while now. European aid will be forthcoming. Orban, again, as I said before, cannot really afford to piss off the EU. He will be brought around and he will either vote for this or be abstained again or disappear again. But he's just playing hard to get. He wants the European Union to give him more money, just like the Republicans will ultimately vote for aid for Ukraine. They're just playing in order to get the stuff they want, which in this case is, I don't know, I guess border security or some pretense. So they can go to the voters and say, oh, look what we did, even though it won't have much of effect. That is my prediction. The Senate has not gone yet into recess. They are working into next week in order to try to come up with a compromise deal that both bolsters border security and provides Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan with military aid that will probably be voted on next week in the Senate and it will go to the House, which will probably only convene in January to approve that. But so something to watch to see if my prediction comes true and indeed that Europe and the United States ultimately provide the aid to Ukraine in order to continue fighting its war. All right. Let's see. Where were we? That, what do we have? Yes, interest rates, just a few words on interest rates. You might have noticed the Federal Reserve came out this last week and said they're not raising interest rates. They're keeping them stable and, and here was news for the market, something new. And they expect the next year they will be lowering interest rates by 75 basis points. That is, they expect three moves for the rate that they control downwards 25 basis points each during 2024. The market of course loves this, as I've told you before, lower interest rates mean the value of assets go up. The 30-year bond is already, not the 30-year bond, sorry, the 10-year bond is already trading at under four, which is astounding because the short-term rate is well over four. The 10-year, which means that investors are expecting over the next few years, interest rates to go down a lot. 75 basis points maybe next year, but even more following that and maybe more next year, depending on how the economy does. It is interesting that next year is an election year. Just an empirical point. I think this is true. I think this is still true. I think that was true in the last election. The Federal Reserve has never raised interest rates during an election year for president. So it, because generally the theory is raising interest rates, the economy slows down. That's not good for the incumbent. So they've never done it. And indeed, decreasing interest rates aggressively into an election, that'll be interesting too, right? Certainly should help, depending on when they do it exactly, should help Biden because it should help the economy. But that is the theory and that assumes that inflation is under control. That's basically what the Fed said. The Fed said they think inflation is under control. They'll keep interest rates constant, but they expect that next year inflation will continue to decline. And as a consequence, they expect to be lowering interest rates. Whether any of that is true is to be determined, but that is their expectation. Stocks of course went up. This year has been a phenomenal year if you've been in the S&P 500. Stocks usually do fairly well during inflation, but stocks do well during times of interest rates going down. So we will see, of course, they didn't do well last year where interest rates were going up. So I think they've done well this year primarily because of the expectation that interest rates would come down. And you see that primarily with the 10-year bond. Also means, by the way, for those of you looking to buy a home, is at least in the short run, interest rates on mortgages are going to come down. The interest rates on mortgages are typically tied in one way or another to the 10-year interest rate. The 10-year interest rate below 4% suggests mortgages are going to come down. And you can expect that to happen so that it'll make houses a little bit more affordable or the prices are very high. And again, the warning here is if inflation is not beat, if inflation picks up again, then that 10-year interest rate will go up, mortgage rates will go up again. My expectation, is it just me? I don't expect inflation to pick up again. For a variety of reasons, I think primarily the fact that the Federal Reserve is shrinking its balance sheet, the fact that it is selling bonds, you know what happens when the Federal Reserve sells bonds? It takes in money. That means money is going, coming out of the market, which means in a sense the money supply is shrinking. As a consequence of that, if the Fed continues that, which it has so far in spite of fears of recession, I think inflation is going to probably, inflation as we measure its CPI, will probably be coming down. All right. Finally, it was announced, I guess this morning, this is a story from the, no, two days ago, two days ago, two days ago at the Texas Tribune, there's a story that Elon Musk is who now lives in Austin, Texas, or in the Austin, Texas area, has now started a foundation, a charity called The Foundation, which is brought in 100 million, which is seeded with $100 million from Elon Musk, and its purpose is to create, launch, a primary and secondary school in Austin focused on teaching science, technology, engineering, and math. The idea here is, I think, to set up the school close to where the employees of Tesla, Tesla has built this massive factory to the east of Austin, Texas, that is to start this, to start this for families, I think, of the people who are going to be while working at the Tesla factory in Austin. Once the schools are operational, the school will then focus on starting a university affiliated with the school. And the whole thing is they're trying to get accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and they want to launch a university. This is fantastic news. As you remember, I've been calling for this all week, that billion dollars that did not go to Harvard should go to founding new universities. And what we want is competition. What we want is new, significantly significant universities with significant funding. I can also tell you that since the testimony of the university presidents at Congress a couple of weeks ago, the contributions flowing to the University of Austin in Texas have increased significantly. And that is also good news, I think. So I want to see, and I don't have anything in this particular schools, I want to see it all over the country. I want to see new universities being started, new universities funded by the money that is not going to pen, not going to Harvard, not going to MIT, not going to a bunch of University of Columbia, hopefully it's not getting a lot of money. I want to see real energy and real excitement around replacing the existing university system with new private universities that are going to be more independent, more committed to some principles and let there be competition. They could be committed to different principles. It's not like all universities should do homogenous, all beauty of competition. And what's exciting about this is they're also doing this primary and high school. That's great. We want competition in private education for at every level from preschool all the way to graduate school. I want to see competition throughout at a high level, well funded, well thought out. I think this is how you change the world. It's going to be through education. And I don't think it can happen without robust competition. And Elon Musk entering into this is great news. Whatever you think about Elon Musk, it's great news because it's another hundred million dedicated to a fantastic project. So Austin, it appears, is right now the center of the universe when it comes to innovation in education and doing new exciting fun stuff. So Austin is the place to be. All right, let's see. By the way, the Musk University supposedly will be some kind of combination of in-house and what do you call it, internet online education. All right, a few reminders. You can use the super chat to support the show. This show is supported through contributions by people like you. Clearly Flawed has just stepped in with a sticker, not even a question, a sticker for $50 that has got us much, much closer to the goal. So thank you, Clearly Flawed. You too can participate and contribute. With a sticker, you don't even have to ask a question. Audi F has a sticker in there. I think I saw Jonathan Honing. Yes, Jonathan Honing has a sticker. So all of that, that's a great way to support the show with just a sticker. And also, don't forget, like the show before you leave, those likes, comments, participation in the chat, shares, of course, any interaction with the video reinforces the algorithm and it raises the profile of whatever video I'm on. So please, on every one of these shows, like the show before you leave, if you like it or if you like one of the segments, share them on your social media, and put in a little comment, even if it's just because everything helps in terms of driving up the ranking. Also, want to remind you, talk about Austin, Texas, that Ironman Institute is holding a conference in Austin, Texas at the end of March. It'll be, it is, you know, anybody can apply, but those of you who would like a scholarship, those of you who are particularly interested in delving deep into Ironman's ideas, who have some background in reading Ironman, those of you who would like to imagine a career as professional intellectuals, I encourage you, encourage you, encourage you to ask for a scholarship and likely you will get it. Say, you know, you heard about this on the Iran Book Show, but to do it, you have to go to einran.org, a-y-n-r-e-n-d.org, slash start here, one word, start here, and you will find the application there. You can click on it and go from there. So, it's going to be, it's going to be fun. Greg Salamieri and Ben Behrou are two of the lecturers. I'll have more information about who else will be lecturing in the weeks to come, but it's a great opportunity. It's at the end of March, but applications are now. I mean, at some point, they'll give away all the, all the scholarships, and now's the time to apply, and again, you'll get to go to Austin, which is becoming this hub of intellectual activity, an exciting place for thinking and, you know, advocating for ideas, the home of Lex Friedman even, and other, many of the big podcasters. All right, let's see. I think that covers it in terms of announcements. There will be a show tomorrow. There'll also be a show on Sunday. Sunday will be members only. If you'd like to participate in the members only show, you can become a member right now by clicking the membership button. Tomorrow's show will be a 2 p.m. East Coast time topic for both of those shows to be determined, to be determined, but that is my plan. The Sunday show will probably be in the evening, most likely in the evening. All right, Shazba says, have you ever seen the movie, Mouse That Ward, 1959 Peter Salas? Shazba, just a note, is again one of the major supporters of the show, and particularly interested in movies and gets me to review a lot of movies. I think I owe Shazba a song. Maybe I don't. Maybe I've covered everything with Shazba. I'm not sure. I do know, I still owe one movie, which I will get to. All right, let's see. Yeah, I owe Shazba the song Zombie by the Cranberries. I thought so. I have, of course, seen the Mouse That Ward. I've seen him more than once. It is an amazing movie because it's got Peter Salas in it. It's an amazing movie because it's super funny. And it's an amazing movie because of how fundamentally true it is. So here's the premise of the movie. The premise of the movie is you've got this tiny little European country that was not part of World War II and therefore was not occupied by the Americans and has never been at war. It's a neutral country. And therefore it's struggling economically. It doesn't have a lot of money and it's just struggling. It's struggling. And they come up with this amazing solution. And the solution is to declare war on the United States and to lose and to have the United States occupy their country and then get all the aid that comes with the United States occupying your country, all the other gazillions of dollars that the United States spends on countries that lose wars to it. So it embraces on a campaign. It launches a campaign to invade the United States. And so Peter Salas gets on a boat. They sail to the U.S. And the real challenge is that they win. So it's really funny. And it's silly. But it's funny. And it's kind of got the right idea. And it's a clever idea. And again Peter Salas plays, I can't remember how many characters, like five, six different characters, all Peter Salas. And he's brilliant in it. So encourage you to watch it. It's called The Mouse at Ward, 1959. Thank you, Shahzabat for reminding me of it. It is a brilliant movie and a lot of fun. Andrew, what changed in America that resulted in the freedom of the 19th century giving way to the creation of the regulatory state and welfare state in the early 20th century? Did wealth erode the nation's commitment to freedom? No, I don't think, I don't think it's wealth. Look, it's, it's objectivism holds and I'm handheld that ideas shape history. And this, this is something that should be taken very seriously. Ideas shape history. And that's certainly what happened in the United States. What happened in the United States is two things happened that are related to one another. One is you saw the decay of Enlightenment ideas. You saw the ideas of the founding fathers come at an attack and nobody really stand up to defend them. That is, the ideas of freedom were left undefended intellectually. And there were no prominent philosophers or prominent intellectuals defending the founders. There were voices here and there, but not of significance and not as a movement. There was no pro-America movement. There was no pro-American freedom movement. And indeed, the idea of what America stood for, freedom, liberty, individual rights, kind of disappeared from the debate, disappeared from the discussion. It was just, it just didn't have a presence. And at the same time, what rose was and what got prominence was the philosophy of Emmanuel Kant in all its different iterations. And that came to the United States, you know, primarily through German immigration, European generally, but Germany in particular immigrants. It also was very well-established. Kant, Hegel, and kind of anti-declaration of independence mentality was very strong in the South. It's how they justified slavery. The South opposed the fundamental principles on which the country was founded. So once the South was, so the South stood in opposition to it, and that intellectual tradition had an impact on the North at the end of the Civil War. But in addition to that, maybe the intellectual movement most known were the progressives. The progressive movement had an enormous impact on the United States. This is a leftist, anti-American pro-nationalism. This is an interesting combination of pro-nationalism, pro-imperialism. Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican progressive, of course, anti-capitalism, anti-capitalism, pro-the state, almost a proto-fascist, socialist and nationalist movement. Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive. And of course, Wilson was a progressive. Indeed, Teddy Roosevelt split from the Republican Party at some point and started a progressive party, which failed, but then it got the progressives basically got absorbed into the Democratic Party. But it had a huge impact on the Republican Party as well. And it moved the entire political framework away from the founders and away from any kind of principles. But also think about who the, if you think American philosophers, philosophers of born and raised and functioning in America, you think of Dewey, you think of James, you think of the pragmatists. These are not men of principles. These are not men of the declaration of the Constitution. These are not men of freedom and liberty as a principle guiding a country. These are the people who elevated pragmatism. So they were much more tunes with the progressives than they were with anybody else. And both of them had a profound, I mean, Dewey had a profound negative, horrific, disastrous impact on American education. And of course, then you look at the kind of people who brandized, who was a, you know, who brought progressivism and pragmatism into the law. And you look how they brought it into universities and basically the takeover by the left of American universities starts in the late 19th century. When America's rich wanted to get their kids well educated, they sent them to Germany and France and they brought back European bad continental philosophy, bad horrible philosophy. And when American universities wanted to hire the best professors in the world so that they could compete and they could become the best universities in the world, they hired European intellectuals. So don't blame the politicians. Don't blame, I don't know, what do you blame wealth? Ideas shaped the world. European ideas coming into the United States in the 19th century. And a lack of defense of the Enlightenment, the lack of defense of this founding, a lack of defense of liberty, freedom, individual rights, capitalism is what destroyed liberty in this country. But people think the universities have gone all rotten suddenly over the last 10 years since war came around. No, no, no, no, no, no. The universities have been going rotten for the last 140 years, 140 years since the late 19th century as they become more and more prominent. They brought in more and more and more intellectuals from Europe. They brought in more and more of continental ideas, continental philosophy. And that's what sunk. What we're seeing today with Woke is just a combination of a very, very long-term trend that's been going on since the late 19th century. And it's a real mistake to just think this is just started with the postmodernist, just started with Woke. This is gone. This goes on for a long time. And that is why America is in the state that it's in today, not because of this president or that president, not because of this political party or that political party, but because of the ideas, because of the philosophy that guides the culture. John says, it's argued that lowering interest rates will ease the housing shortage since people won't want to sell and lose their low-interest mortgage comments. No, because everybody who sells a home buys another one. It's not the case that we have three, four homes and we might sell a couple. It is the case that people are not selling their homes right now because they don't want to buy another one. So that doesn't affect the supply. You're just flipping one home for another. The only way to affect, to change housing shortage is either for, I don't know, suddenly a whole lot of homeowners to die, or more homes to be built. So you're not going to change the equilibrium with regard to housing without massive increases in the supply of housing. You have to build more homes and you have to build them at scale. But the reality is that since the financial crisis, building of homes has declined and it's below replacement. That is, it's below the number of people seeking homes. It's way below demand. And the reason for this is multiple, again, zoning restrictions and building and all of that, and shortage of labor. The fact is that during the great financial crisis, a lot of people in construction, a lot of the workers in construction left the United States. They went back to Mexico and they've never returned. And they've never been allowed to return, even if they wanted to. I'm not sure they want to, but they've never returned. And Americans don't go into home construction. And the more we don't allow the illegal immigrants to work, we continue to have the shortage. So, you know, there's just no kind of way around it. If you want to see home prices come down, you have to increase the building of housing. And that means you have to do everything necessary to increase the building of housing. And that means open up the borders to legal immigrants who can work in the country and do away with the zoning and other restrictions that limit their ability to build. All right, we are slowly chipping away and getting close to our goal. It would be great if we met it. We're just $65 short. So, oh, Catherine, Catherine, who is always, oh, well, she says she won't be here, but she put in a couple of dollars before the show even started just to show her support. Really, really thank you, Catherine. Catherine's there almost every show. Oh, quick reminder, December 31st, New Year's Eve, I will be doing a roundup show for 2023. The big stories of 2023 will do a show. It'll be, well, go as long as you guys want it to go. Basically, it'll be several hours, and it will be focused on review of the year. It'll also be focused on raising funds for the Iran Book Show. We'll have a target. The target will be at least $10,000 or somewhere around $10,000. That was the target last year, and we met it. I'll have the exact number as we get closer in terms of what the target will be. The goal will be to make this December better than last December. So, I need to get the number from last December, see how much we raised before 31st, and then set the target at $1 above what we did last year. So, I'm hoping you guys will join me whether you are regular Super Chat or whether you listen live regularly or not, or maybe you never listen live or you listen on the podcast or you watch the YouTube after the fact. I'm hoping that you join that show even for a little while. Come on live, hang out with us, join the chat, give Scott hell, and contribute through a sticker, through a question to what we're doing. But I'm hoping we get a lot of people that we managed to bring in a lot of people live, that you stick with the show, and it'll be a two-three hour show, and it'll be, I promise, interesting and a lot of fun. And we'll really focus on the year in review and cover all the big stories of the year. And there's a lot to cover. This was a busy, newsy year. And of course, this is the first year where we'll be doing the news roundups. We started late last year, so this is the first four year we've done that, so it'll be a good opportunity to talk about that and get your, also your impressions of how it's gone. And what could we do better to make the Iran book show bigger, better, more interesting, more engaging, the show that cannot be missed, something that everybody has to watch and listen to. All right, Frank says, suggesting a show subjectivism in all its forms. Thank you, Frank, in order to sponsor a topic, an actual topic that is $1,000 to get your topic covered on the Iran book show. Anytime you guys want to do it, let me know. We will do it. Cedric says that the 31st need to be 15K. Yes, I think so. I think it'll be somewhere between 10 and 15. But again, it depends on how much we raise up in there. But yes, at least 10. That would be fun. Gobbled words. Did you see Frankenstein versus Dushowitz on P.S. Morgan, help or hinder the war? I think anytime you put Finkelstein on TV, you're hindering the war. He should not be treated as an incredible debater. I haven't seen it though. So I'd be curious how Dushowitz did. Dushowitz is obviously very pro-Israel and has written a good book on Israel and is a good debater. He's a lawyer after all. But it's also a little bit of a shady guy, particularly given his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. All right, Andrew. I wanted to chat this on the positive show tomorrow, but can't make it. You made a profound point. The major form of love is not loving oneself, but loving life. Loving life requires an action orientation that is objectivistic. Yes. Now, of course, you can't love life unless you love yourself, like you love your life. It all starts with loving your life. But that loving your life leads you very quickly to loving life. One of the things you love about yourself is that you're alive and the possibilities that that engages. And then one of the things, of course, you realize is all the potential that that creates and all the potential that life, human life out there creates for you. The life of others affect you in dramatic ways. The possibilities for romantic relationships, the possibilities for friendship, the possibilities for trade, the possibilities for enjoyment of the products of the things that other people have created. So yes, loving life, maybe that's the topic I'll do tomorrow, is maybe I'll do loving life. All right, it could, you know, a significant role. Yeah, I think loving life would be a good topic. So maybe that'll be the topic for tomorrow. I'll decide tomorrow. But thanks, thanks, Andrew, for giving me the idea. And of course, that is connected to Jonathan Honing is going to be on the show next Thursday. You will be my interview, my interviewee. And Jonathan has just come out with a new book about loving your pet. And it is focused on Ayn Rand and her cats. Lena Peacoff and his two dogs, primarily his second dog. And of course, Jonathan Honing's love of pets. That's why I told you, when I told you I was going to interview Jonathan about something I knew nothing about. I know nothing about pets. I've never had a pet. I've never wanted it. Well, maybe I wanted a pet when I was a little kid, but I've never really wanted a pet as an adult. Never had a pet. Don't anything about pets. So we'll be talking about pets. And we'll be talking about Lena Peacoff and Ayn's attitude towards pets is reflected in this new book that Jonathan Honing is putting out. So it should be a fun show. Jonathan is a blast. He's smart and funny and entertaining and smart, did I say smart? And so it'll be, it'll be a lot of fun. So I encourage you to come and participate live and maybe share your pet stories. I'm sure a lot of you, I know, I know many of you have pets. You can share some of your pet stories. And so, yeah, I mean, that'll be Thursday at 7 p.m. East Coast time. All right. Let's see. Black cat. There's somebody who should be on the pet show on Thursday, right? Which Hungarian is the worst influence on American and Western politics? Soros or Orban? Orban seems to suddenly punch way above his weight and is a darling of yours, conservative think tanks. Yeah, I mean, Orban certainly punches above his weight. I mean, he is the prime minister of a relatively small country with little really influence and very, very weak economics. He has been very influential on the American right over the last few years, I'd say five to 10 years, maybe less than 10. But as we very influential over the last five, maybe six, seven years on the American right. But I think overall, in terms of influence, it has to be Soros. Soros has spent more money, has put more resources at play. And really, I mean, I would compare Soros to, but even more so, to God, you know, this is this is my name challenge, right? To the oil guy, to the billionaires of fund the libertarian and conservative causes here in the United States. But he is one of, if not the lead funder of yeah, the Koch brothers. Thank you, Koch. God. He is equivalent to Koch brothers on the left. He funds, he's funded many of the think tanks. He's funded many of the political activist groups that have, on the left, he particularly funds particularly left wing causes, you know, so the far right, far left at BLM and places like that. So Soros has had a huge impact on universities and on think tanks and on, on the far left. He's done it for many, many more years than Orban as he's, he's, he's a, he's, he's a much more, what would you say? He has more gravitas than, than Orban does. He's an incredibly successful hedge fund manager. He made his money in, in, in, in the, in the world that they, you know, really ultimately doing good for the world. And as dedicated as money to these, to these horrible causes, all in the name of what he calls an open society, he is hugely influenced by Karl Papa, or at least he, he argues that his, his intellectual source is called Papa. Karl Papa is also very influential on libertarians and on, on some conservatives. And he is a, he even, he's written a number of books. One of them is called the open society, which is a term that I believe was coined by Karl Papa. He is one of the most influential philanthropists of the last 30 years. And his philanthropy is being focused and dedicated to leftist causes. But look, Orban is a massively destructive force. He is a massive destructive force, existentially in Europe. He is a model for authoritarian government. He is an agent of Putin inside the European Union. He is an inspiration in a sick kind of way for the American right. But the American right doesn't need really Orban. It has Putin. It has every dictate out there in the world to be inspired by. Orban just combines this anti-immigration Christian, although Orban himself is probably an atheist. He certainly wasn't a Christian until he figured out the Christianity was a good ploy. But, but he is bad. He's really bad, but, but it doesn't, hasn't had the time and doesn't have the gravitas of a geosaurus. Gravitas in, in this case, in a negative sense. Orban, thank you, Orban, is DEI the natural result of a large welfare state? Resources get distributed based on who is a victim and who is an oppressor instead of through the market. I mean, yes, I think the sympathy for DEI is the logic that has the same origin as the sympathy for the welfare state. Altruism guides both and, and, and kind of dictates that both be kind of a requirement, the sacrifice of the able to the not able that those who have to those who don't have those who produce to those who don't produce DEI is just a consistent application of that. But in terms of just a legal and even intellectual tradition, this is a consequence of thinkers. It's a consequence of ideas. It's a consequence of a whole series of thinkers. I, I highly encourage you to read if you're interested in this Yasha Monk's book, Identitarianism, which kind of highlights the lead intellectuals that brought us to DEI. And also DEI is a consequence as Hananya has pointed out. I thought is best SAO most original SAO pointed out that it is really a consequence of the inevitable consequence of the Civil Rights Act, which basically said you can't discriminate in private business, and then affirmative action and the combination of two and the legal, the entire legal system that has embraced that and has created massive liability to employers who might not quite abide by or, you know, they never know if they're buying but not, but created a whole industry for people to come in and tell businesses how to abide by the different regulations and controls imposed by government because of the Civil Rights Act and because of affirmative action. What is amazing as Hananya points out is you can get rid of all of that by an executive or a big chunk of it, not all of it, by an executive order. I don't think people know this although I did talk about it on a show that I did on this issue. Affirmative action is an executive order. The president of the United States could just pass an executive order with basically overturning affirmative action. Trump, for example, could have done that. Now talk about if you really wanted to go after the left. If you really wanted to go after the left. I mean truly, that's what you would have done. Overturn the affirmative action, executive action, which is easy to do, and I don't think Congress would overturn you. I don't think Congress would pass a law that's saying to fight affirmative action. I just don't think they have the votes. So not that hard to do, but no republican has had the balls to do it, including the so-called fighter Donald Trump. He's not a fighter. He's just a big mouth. That's all he is. He didn't do anything to stand up to the left, other than yell and emote. He's very good at emoting, at expressing emotion. All right guys, $25 and we're there. Naveen, is Scott in reality a plan to make the show more exciting? I'm not going to say. I mean, I'm not going to say. I'm going to leave that as a mystery. Who knows? Who knows? All right, Daniel. If the left believes that race and gender are social constructs, how is that even meaningful if they believe everything is socially constructed? Social construct compared to what? Well, that is one of the many contradictions that the left embraces. Remember, Hegel's philosophy is a philosophy that allows embraces, celebrates contradictions. But they believe that race doesn't have a reality, in other words. It's not manifest in any kind of real attributes that anybody has. It's something that human beings make up. Now, you could argue that good post-modernists believe everything is a social contract. And that's right, everything. There is no reality. It's everything. Post-continent philosophy, to a large extent, is everything, is we make out because we have no access to real reality anyway. The other, of course, contradiction is if they believe it's a social contract, how do you get CRT? And there, there is a whole line of writings within the left's academic discipline that argues that you have to be strategically embrace race in order to fight racism, even though you know race is not real. You have to embrace it in order to fight. And there's, I think, an Indian thinker that the left has embraced around this, strategic something it's called. Again, I got this from Yasha Monk's excellent book on, or interesting book on, on this topic. So I highly encourage you. It's relatively short and quick, and he doesn't dwell too much, and he's not coming at it from kind of a right-wing perspective. He's a left-of-center intellectual, very critical of it, but critical from the left, which makes it, I think, more interesting than just the right blasting the left, which is mostly boring. So it's, yeah, I mean, the left is filled with contradictions. David just took us to the goal. Thank you, David. Really, really appreciated David Batson. So there is an edifice of Satan in a state building, edifice of Satan in a state building in Iowa. Somebody beheaded it, which I think is hilarious. But should there be, and should there be emblems of evil in state houses? I think no. Yeah, I don't think so. I don't understand who would do that, who would put that there. Vandalism is vandalism, no matter what. So that is not the case. But, yeah, but there shouldn't be any emblems of the Bible either, right? I mean, so you shouldn't have the Ten Commandments. You shouldn't have Moses. You shouldn't have emblems of the Bible either in a state house. State houses should be neutral. They should be a complete separation. I do find it a little entertaining that there is Satan in a state building. What's up with Iowa? I mean, how did that happen? Who was the genius who thought that went up and put up a statue of Satan? No idea. All right, everybody. Thank you. Thanks to all the Super Shadows for making our goal. Thank you, David, for getting us over the hump. And thank you, Mike and Darlene and RDF, and in particular, Clearly Flawed, who really put in $50 today. And that was kind of the difference to really get us close to the goal. All right. Thanks, everybody. I will see you all tomorrow, 2 p.m. East Coast time. Maybe the title of the show was Loving Life. No, somebody has a book called Loving Life, so I don't want to make the title the same as that. So we'll figure it out. But it'll be something about love. I think love is a good topic. All right, everybody, I'll see you all tomorrow. Bye.