 fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow. I have no idea what that noise was. That was bizarre. It was coming from YouTube. So when I muted the YouTube download, that was weird. It never happened before. That was just maybe YouTube wanting to silence me. I have no idea what was going on. No idea. That was weird. Anyway, we're here. The noise is gone. We're back. Volume is perfect now. Better than usual. Excellent. Yeah, a little bit of a rough start to being that kind of day. And yeah, I mean, what would it be? What would we have The Iran Brookshow without some little technical issue somewhere? Hopefully the sound is good. Let me know if there's an issue. I'm going to take, well, I need the headphones later, but we'll put them back on. I'm going to play you a bit of Ben Shapiro, so I'll need the headphones. Let me know if there are any other issues. If there are any other issues with sound. Again, I apologize for that. That was pretty brutal. Also, let me go and get rid of this. There's a fake episode on the podcast. Let me get rid of that. So I don't have to do because otherwise people are going to get a notification and that'll be bad. Where is it? Right. We deleted that. All right. I think we're getting ready to go anyway. Yeah. Talk about YouTube. I did get an email. I got a couple of emails from YouTube the other day saying that they were warning me. I was getting a community warning for violating YouTube's community standards. And they were deleting two of my videos. They were taking them off my channel because there was content in there that violated, I guess, misinformation regarding COVID vaccines that I had said something, did something that horrified them in terms of COVID vaccines. So I challenged both. I send them an email. There's an email option. You can click challenge and you can click it and you challenge it. And I said, look, I'm a huge supporter of the vaccines. I don't know what you want. What the deal is, I didn't say anything. I'm sure I didn't say anything. What are you talking about? Within five minutes, I swear, five minutes it took them. They sent me an email back saying, basically, whoops, we're storing the videos, taking away your community black mark. Everything's fine. They've got some really, really stupid AI that listens to them, flags it, then gets the objection, listens to it again, takes the flag. I mean, how does it happen so quickly? It has to be automated. And wow. So anyway, I'm on good standing with YouTube again. For a few minutes there, I was like, what the hell is going on? What did I do? So it's going to happen. One of these days, I'm going to do something that is going to piss off the YouTube gods. It might be today, because we are talking about a pretty controversial topic. It might be another time, but we will see. It does look like the YouTube is sensitive to something that I'm saying, not to exactly what. God, I've got a ringing in my ears, and I don't know if the ringing is coming from the outside, or if it's just because that awful noise before, and I was wearing headphones, and it was going poof, and it's done damage in my ears so that now they're ringing. I have no idea. Anyway, we'll find out. All right, so today we're going to talk about the trans issue. We're going to talk about why trans is such a big issue, and we're going to take the perspective, both of the left and the right, and we want to try to understand why the left is pushing it, and why the right, this is like the number one issue for the right. I mean, earlier today I went to the Daily Wire website and just looked at the articles, the one, the Daily Wire I've said. Like 80% of the top 10 articles, maybe 60%, something really needs to trans, or butlite, or target, or something related to that. So the question then, I went into the Vortex and I ended up listening to Ben Shapiro, and Ben Shapiro has this show, an hour thing, on porn, which was super interesting and disturbing, and I figured, okay, there's something here I can talk about. All of this was started, by the way, by Christian Jackson, who basically told me today that my problem was that I didn't talk enough about trans issues, because that was the number one issue that anybody, anyway, cares about. They don't care about these economic issues, trade issues. One, Ukraine, nobody could give a damn about that. What they really care about is the trans issue. So I figured, okay, if Action Jackson, if Christian is telling me this, I better pay attention, so I paid attention. And we're going to try to analyze the phenomena. What is it that makes this issue so attractive to the left? And then what is it about this issue that the White finds so offensive? And my guess is we could probably do a few shows on this because there is a lot to say about this, and this has a lot, this is multi-layered, it's not just one layer. So this will be kind of a first attempt, the first stab at kind of dealing with this question. And then we'll see what we'll probably have to do follow-ups in the future. Let me say right off the bat, I think I've expressed this in the past, but I want to make it clear. Look, there's no question in my mind that the transsexuality is a real thing. There are people who don't feel like, don't think they have the gender that their biology would suggest. And some of that is biological. That is, there are people who have the physical features of one gender, but the chromosomes don't align. I mean, so if, you know, X, Y, X, X, but there are all kinds of bizarre, weird things that happen at the genetic level that confuse things. Now, most of these things are borderline issues. They're also pretty rare, but they do indeed exist. And the more you read about this issue, the more you realize that, yeah, I mean, there really is something here. This is not, but it's a tiny minority of people. And, you know, I feel really sorry for them because they, just like somebody who's born with other kind of genetic diseases, they have a genetic disease or a genetic problem. They have maybe hormones that are misaligned with, or something in the brain that's misaligned with their genitalia. And that's screwed up. And I don't know that there's a solution for people like that. It's sad, right? But it's a tiny fringe. It's a small group of people. It's not a lot of people. And there might be some people right now who are listening who are trans and do have, you know, might or might not have this biological feature. So it definitely exists. I do not have the stats on how big of a group that is. I read about it, the stats in this book about trans that I read, but I can't remember the stats. But they, but it's out there and it exists. And yeah, Ian says the book is Kathleen Stocks, Material Girls, which I read a big part of. And I thought, I thought it was quite good. I don't agree with everything she says, but it's quite good. In first establishing the fact that there is this phenomena and there is this small percentage of people where this phenomena is not just psychological. It really is biological. And this group is, you know, confused and it's difficult for them. And some of them ultimately choose to have all kinds of reconstructive surgery, which is brutal and I can't believe it's pleasant. But maybe at the end of the day, it's somehow better for them. I don't know and I don't pretend. But again, tiny fraction. And I think I've told you in the past, I know Deirdre McCluskey, who used to be Donald McCluskey. And Deirdre will certainly tell you, I think, that she is much happier as a woman than she was as a man before this. And I believe her. I believe her. But that was sad because she lived a long life and had kids and family and everything as a man. And it couldn't, it must have been horrible and then the change must have been horrible and your kids don't. Anyway, it's not, these are not happy stories. But if they can find relief somehow, if they can improve their life somehow, if they can somehow, you know, live a semi-normal life, then so be it, why deny them that as adults, even if it's almost unthinkable and it is, it is pretty, it is pretty sad, the whole phenomenon. But what the left has done, I think really over the last, I don't know, 10 years, but it's certainly accelerated over the last five or so years, is they've elevated trans to some kind of high moral status. They've elevated it to some kind of virtue. And they have tried, and I think to some extent succeeded in making it sexy and making it popular and making it cool and making it something that we should all strive towards. And what's really interesting here for kids in particular is, you know, trans is usually, and again, I think the stats read this out, usually something that men, that boys and then men have an issue with and then convert to women. Sometimes it's women converting to men, but that's rarer historically. But over the last few years, it's become this massive number of girls, women who want to become men. And it's become, again, cool. It's become the thing to do. It's become popular. The cool kids do it, or certain, maybe the geeky kids or whatever. There's a clique in high school that is cool and supportive of trans. And so there's something going on here with, you know, the elevation of this into our culture as not only normal, women, it's not normal. It's fringe and it's unusual and it's abnormal and it's, to a large extent, the result of some abnormality that's genetic. And it's become cool. And then the consequence of that is not only is the left pushed that it's become cool. It's pushed. And part of the reason it becomes cool is girls, a lot of girls, when they grow up, you know, there's many ways in which it's more fun to be a boy. Boys are given more latitude. Boys are more respected in many ways. We still discriminate against girls in certain aspects. A lot of girls want to be tomboy. A lot of girls do indeed prefer to be boys. They usually pass once they get hormonal and once they become women, usually goes away. But it does exist. And what you see is girls who feel more tomboy-ish, if you will, latching onto this instead of just viewing the tomboy-ish as a phase, viewing it as something metaphysical and therefore something that needs to be done, something needs to be done about it, hormones, for example. And what's happened over the last 10 years is that there's been this real push among the left to take children who express feelings about what gender they are and cultivate that and play to that and ultimately to provide them with medical solutions anywhere from hormones before and during puberty to surgery. Now, I think doing that to kids is horrific. I do not believe it should be done. You know, whether the state should intervene or whether the state should ban it, you could argue it's child abuse. I'm open to that argument. But whether the state should intervene is, I think, a different issue. I don't think doctors should do it. I don't think parents should do it. I think it's horrific. I think when a child becomes an adult, when they get to a certain age, they can make the choices for themselves. But to give children hormones, to go against their biology unless there's a really, really, really good medical reason to do that, I think that's just horrible and horrific and abusive. But the left doesn't embrace this and celebrates it and has made the transition the number one issue to the point of rejecting feminism, to the point of rejecting gay and lesbians. I mean, there was just an episode on, God, I forget the conservative's name, the gay conservative who I debated at Clemson University. Anyway, he did a whole thing about trans culture versus queer culture and the idea is one of the things that seems to be happening is that the trans are rejecting the idea of gayness. Gay assumes that you have a particular gender and a lot of this trans movement is involved in this idea that there is no such thing as gender, that there is no such thing as a woman, there is no such thing as biology, doesn't matter. It is really interesting about what makes this so important to the left. Why is this the big thing for Andrew Sullivan? That's right, Scott, thank you for reminding me, Andrew Sullivan. What makes this such a big deal for the left? Why is the left so important? And then I want to get to why the right freaks out about it so much. And I think there are a few things when it comes to the left, particularly the far left, that the whole transgender thing really resonates with them. First is the left's, I mean, long time advocacy for the persecuted. And again, this I think can come from legitimate, positive, pro-human, pro-values orientation, particularly as was reflected in the civil rights, but even in the gay rights movement, they see discrimination and they see oppression. They see people being discriminated against and being oppressed. And they respond to that and they respond to that by taking up the cause. And look, they've done, they did a, you know, the left has achieved a lot when it comes to this. And they have been successful. And again, it's not always motivated by the right things, but I think it sometimes is. And particularly historically, I think it has been. That is the civil rights movement that was a just movement in the sense that it stood up against Jim Crow laws and against racism and against discrimination, against discrimination by the state, against just generally the irrationality and the evil of racism and discrimination. Was a just and right movement. And it was very successful. In some ways, it was too successful in the sense that it laid the seeds for the destruction of its own goal of colorblindness, but it succeeded for a while. And I think the same thing is true with gays. The gays were discriminated against. They were treated horrifically. They were not granted equal rights before the law. And I think that the movement, particularly over the last 10, you know, 10 years, was 5, 6 years ago, 10 years back, 20 years back, was very successful, very successful in changing Americans' attitudes. Most importantly, in changing people's attitudes towards gays. It's no big deal today. Nobody really cares that much about it, except people like Ben Shapiro and the religious nuts and Walsh and people like that. People generally don't care about people being gay. Gay marriage was approved. And there's a certain, you know, there's a certain real legitimate issue that the left rallies around in terms of oppressed groups. And, you know, suddenly trance have been oppressed. Certainly they're marginalized and they have been. If gays were marginalized, certainly trance have been marginalized even more. So they rally around that. But the problem with that is that much of that is not actually motivated by positive values, at least for a certain fringe element within the left. And I think that fringe element today is dominating the intellectual debate. For a large number of leftists around these causes. What is really driving this is some sense of, you know, in a sense, a worship of the oppressed groups. It's this, what we've talked about, this transactional attitude, this seeking out the most oppressed, but not just in terms of improving their lot. But in terms of elevating them and turning them into the very fact that they're oppressed, turning that into a virtue, turning that into the epitome of virtue, turning that into the epitome of morality. That is what we should all be sacrificing too. And the motivation is not so much to help the oppressed group. The motivation, much more than that, is to drag down people who are not like the oppressed group. Not even the oppressors, just people who are not like the oppressed group. I mean, this is, I think, much about, much of the agenda of the modern intersectionality movement. So you get Black Lives Matter, which is, you know, there's a real issue there of a black being discriminated against, is there racism? All legitimate questions. Is there police brutality against blacks? Legitimate question, right? We can look at the data and look at facts and figure it out. But that's not what really is driving many of these people. What's driving them is to elevate this one group that is oppressed to a kind of moral status where everybody must sacrifice to that group, not for the sake of improving that group's lot, because they don't really care about that. But in the sacrifice that everybody else has to commit. So the whole point about BLM and white guilt and all that, white fragility and all that, was not to help blacks, people that happen to have black skin. The whole point of that movement was to inflict guilt on people who don't have white skin. The point of that movement was to knock down the people who have so-called privileged. The whole point of that was to hurt the non-opressed group, to knock them down, to put them in their place. And that, I think, is true of every single group that they, in modern times, in the last, I'd say, 10, 15 years, any group that the left rallies around, it's not anymore enough to try to elevate that group, to try to improve their lot. The main energy is in knocking down everybody else, is in using the oppressed group to create guilt and sacrifice and contrition among the non-opressed group. And that's the whole point at the end of intersectionality. And it clearly was part of the agenda of BLM and white fragility and all that. It's to knock everybody else down. And it's all driven by a kind of a egalitarian ideology that realizes that you can't raise people up. So the only way to reach this imagined, utopian, impossible equality is by knocking everybody down. And not knocking everybody down economically. It's not about economics, it's about culture, it's about who you are, your soul. And this is why there's a certain eagerness among these people to get kids who are not trans, to be trans, to knock them off their privilege, to make them be part of this suffering group, to make them part of the oppressed group, to make them feel what it's like, and even if they don't go through the whole conversion of therapy, to inflict the guilt on them that they're not that. There's something special about being trans, there's something really good about being trans, and they can't be that. They should feel bad about it, particularly given that this other group is oppressed. And by the way, that oppression is what makes them good and moral and interesting and virtuous and worthy of our affection, worthy of our interest. So the left is driven by, I think the better left is driven by we need to help the oppressed, we really want equal rights, we want equality, we drove them to get equality for gays, we drove them to try to get equality for blacks. But then there's a much more insidious, extreme fall-left group that is all about, all about, knocking anybody who is quote, normal down. Being normal is a privilege which you should feel ashamed of, and you should feel guilty of. And that's what they live for, that's what drives them, it's that nihilism. So I think that's one, obviously, driving force for the left. The second driving force when it comes to the trans issue is, more I think, metaphysical and epistemological. It's got to do with this notion coming out of, I think the postmodernists, and the generally modern kind of monophilosophical thinking, that reality isn't what it is. Facts are not what they are, reality is kind of fluid, there is no truth, there is no nature, there is no identity. And there's a sense in which trans kind of fits really, really neatly into this, a strong, you know, primacy of consciousness, you can be whatever you want to be. You're born a man, you can be a woman, whatever you feel like, whatever your emotions dictate. So there's this strong push of this, you know, this fluid nature, you don't have to, you know, let's not let nature limit us, let's not let biology limit us. Let's not let reason limit us, whatever you feel like. A real, as I said, strong primacy of consciousness, which I think is very, very appealing. A rejection of reality, of facts, of truth, of nature, of the nature of things. And an embrace of anything goes, anything goes. Complete subjectiveness. And this is where, partially where, you know, this idea of 98 genders comes from or whatever, it's, you know, I might, that day is fluid, I feel like a man today, I might feel like a woman tomorrow, or I might feel like neither on another day, like three quarters man, quarter woman, or something completely new, maybe I feel like an alien tomorrow. You know, and then when it's applied to race, they kind of, they kind of worry about that. They're not too happy when somebody who's white skin declares that they feel like they're black and therefore they're black, they don't quite buy that. But, you know, there's, and they don't like concepts, and they don't like concepts that are too rigid. Right, that have actual definitions, that actually means something. They want that too, to be kind of subjective, kind of touchy-feely, kind of, so that, you know, there's the big, you know, debate about what is a woman, you know, they come up with different characterizations of biological women just women who choose to be women for a day, for a month, for a year, forever. It's really fascinating to watch because it's, it may be more than in any other area, you know, in life, they have taken a real issue, which is these people who are really trans, who really do have an issue, biological, if you will, what do you call it, borderline case, which is rare and unusual and at the fringe. They've taken something like that and they've used as an excuse to declare that there are no borders, that there is no clear definitions, that there is no reality, that everything's in flux, that everything is whatever you want it to be. And it's this, it is a manifestation of this dominant, this dominates the left, but is really throughout our culture. And that is this women worship and emotionalism and whatever I feel like, that's what goes, you know, as long as it's in the framework of altruism and collectivism. And all of this is kind of, it's kind of weird, and we'll get to this when we talk about the right, it's kind of weird because on the one hand, it's the ultimate fragmentation. Indeed, every individual is a different species, maybe a different gender, maybe a different, because we're all different. So there's a complete fragmentation where, you know, we keep getting to smaller and smaller and smaller groups and more marginal groups and more marginal groups and we're fan-meaning everything and there are no principles, there's no unifying factor in 99 genders and even those are fluid. So there's nothing solid. It's a complete disintegration, a complete disintegration of the mind. There's no absolutes other than the validity of disintegration. So it's a completely disintegrated philosophy. Well, philosophy is too strong of a world, a complete disintegrated view of the world. And, you know, with anything like that, so on the one hand they fragmented the smallest of pieces, right? Individuals who have all these different characteristics. And on the other hand, because that doesn't go anywhere, it doesn't leave them with anything and it suddenly doesn't leave them with anything that is uniting, that drives them, they have to ultimately revert to some form of collectivism to gain all these crazy little individual feeling beings into groups and into collectives and they start categorizing them. So people are now categorized by all these different fragments, but they're still members of group and at the end of the day what really matters to them is the group identity. So you've got this complete iteration epistemologically of people's ability to think and the consequence of that are always tribalism and collectivism and the left is of course massively tribal and collectivist and you see that with the rise of racism in the kind of on the left. Racism that demands that, you know, the majority, those with white skin feel bad about it and those with black skin, you know, embrace their suffering as a virtuous thing and demand some form of justice and you see it in the, you know, either you're with the trans or against the trans, it's all one big, one big, it's again, it's all about tribes and the way they treated Jackie Wallings who's the leftist, right, but a feminist is because she questions some of the tribalistic views regarding trans and it's not that she's against trans, she's not for discriminate against trans, she's quite the opposite, but she doesn't buy into this, you can be whatever you feel like being and gender doesn't matter and gender doesn't exist and she argues, no gender does exist, it's why we're fighting over gender and there's a difference between a man and a woman. That's why men tend to abuse women, not women abusing men and that's why we have to, you know, the whole me too, that's why we have to fight against men abusing us but if they're no genders and it's all fluid then that, I mean, she's sane enough to recognize that that's insane. But that's unacceptable because the tribalism have dogma and collectivistic dogma and you either follow the dogma, you belong to the tribe or you're out, you don't count, you completely out. So this disintegration ultimately forces people into kind of a tribal mentality because they're incapable of thinking, they're incapable of generalizing, they need a dogma in order to be able to survive but it's a completely fragmented, disintegrated ideology. So the trans issue is perfect for the left, it's perfect for the left because it serves these two strong functions. It both has its core and oppressed group and it challenges and it's subjectivism on steroids. It's complete epistemological subjectivism on steroids that they can embrace and they can celebrate and they can run around and advocate for in absolutist terms. This isn't as amazing how subjectivists have their absolutes and have something that is unequivocal that they know exactly what it is. So that's the appeal I think on the left, it's a perfect issue for them. Why are the rights so obsessed by it? Like I get you care about kids and you want to make sure the kids are not caught up in this and you want to make sure the kids are not being abused, the kids are not bad things are not happening to kids but it really does seem like an obsession. But like corporate America can do all kinds of horrible things that advocate for violating rights but if they suggest that they might be pro-gay or anti-law that is perceived as anti-gay like Disney or if they have a trans person just doing a commercial for beer or if they have some rainbow colored flags and some merchandise that might come off as pro-gay, not even pro-trans as much, pro-gay, the right just flips out. It flips out. It's not like the response to anything else. It's not like the response to suddenly any violation of our property rights or our economic rights. It's like, you know, maybe like the response to abortion. It's all tied up in sex and it's something that the right has a real problem with. So what's going on? What's going on on the right? Why is this so such an offense to them? Well partially, you know, the right is an M2. They are pro-integration. They're pro-integration about the wrong thing and they see this complete fragmentation and disintegration and subjectivism and they clearly reject that and they're not interested in that and it really, really turns them off. But a big part of that is that the right doesn't like what they view, not what I view, but what they view as the individualism that is associated with the trans movement and the left more broadly. It's really fascinating that the right views the left as individualistic. The right views the left as only caring about the pursuit of happiness, individual happiness, God forbid. The right's upset because the left seems to worship individual happiness and individual desires. And you know, that can't be right. The right will tell you the foundation of society is not the individual. You can ask Jordan Peterson, you can ask Ben Shapiro, I'll show you a clip of Ben Shapiro actually saying this. The foundation of society is not the individual. It is the family and through the family society and through the society ultimately the state, religion, the state. But the individual and individuals happiness is not the moral purpose. So what they're upset about in the left is the left's individualism as they perceive it. Now, granted, it's not individualism. I mean, it's kind of funny. It's really funny to hear people criticizing the left or being individualistic. Right, I mean, this is the left that's associated with socialism, that's associated with collectivism, always has been associated with collectivism. With classism, which is collectivism, with, I mean, today, racism, which is collectivism. But the right today associates the left with individualism and hates them for that. Now, add to that the fact that it's subjective individualism. So we agree with them that we reject the subjective part of that. But that's not really what's driving it. What's really driving it is that they care about the individual and that's spooky. Now, so let me play you this bit from Ben Shapiro where he makes this point. But I hear it all over the place. This is not, you hear it from Matt Walsh and you read it all over the place. The right is dedicated to the collectivism and dedicated to the mysticism and this family issue dedicated to the family, which we'll get to in a minute. So this is Ben Shapiro. Now, this is in the context of porn, not in the context of trans. But there's a sense in which there's something similar here, but let's listen to this. This is how communities are formed. Is that too loud? Was that too loud? Was it just my headphones? My headphones are too loud. Let's try this again. The original unit of society is not, in fact, according to the vast majority of societies across all time and space. The original unit of society is not the individual. I think that's too loud for you guys. Let me just lower the volume here. So the individual unit of society, the unit of society is not the individual, not the individual. Because the individual in a state of nature dies. The original unit of society is the family. The unit of society, the original unit of society, the thing that society is made up of is not an individual. It's family. Now think about what that means. If family is the individual, if family is the unit of society, then family is everything. If the purpose of the individual is to form families and that's it, then again, family is everything. Then of course we don't want gays. They can't form families, not in a natural way. And of course we don't want trans. There's trans. Don't belong in families. Don't create families or not in families. If the original unit of society is the family and you can't have children, then what's the purpose of your life? You can't have the purpose of your life. You're not even part of society. If you don't get married, then what does that count? He later on goes on to talk about other arrangements other than monogamy. He's horrified by them. The only thing that makes sense is the family. And if the family is under attack, or clearly the family is under attack by trans movement, because if gender is under attack, then identity is under attack, sexual identity is under attack, and the family is under attack. But this is pure tribalism, pure collectivism. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson and the founding fathers made a mistake. They would have said, not that individuals have rights, not that individuals are created equal, because they're not. If family is created, individuals are created to form families, which should then have rights before the law. And our legal system should all be protecting families, not individuals. The family is the integrating unit. And if that's the case, well, of course this is a direct attack on what they believe. For example, in individualism, so when the individual is attacked, his rights are attacked, we get seriously upset. And we want to go defend the protect... For them, the number one issue is family. This is a big part of their opposition to abortion. This is a big part of the whole family values, which was the big push in the 80s, and is now morphed into just standard rhetoric of the right. It's all about family. Family, the importance of the family, the unity of the family. And all society is oriented toward the family. What the Internet does, it makes the individual the locus of society. The Internet is bad. He is talking about porn, but he could be talking about transit, doesn't matter. What the Internet has done, particularly since the iPhone came about, is it's made the individual the locus of society. How evil is that? How horrible is that? And this is why the Internet is bad. Now, this is why, particularly by the way, porn is bad. Porn is bad because you do it by yourself. How horrific is that? You're having fun by yourself when what you should be doing is having sex to create babies, to form a family. That's the whole purpose of sex. There's no other purpose of sex. It is sort of the final human iteration of the enlightenment value of pure individualism. Notice this. Like for him porn, I would say even trans. He views this as the final iteration of enlightenment individualism, of the enlightenment. And this is a trend among the right. They want to associate the enlightenment with the left. They want to associate the enlightenment with pure subjectivism. They want to associate the enlightenment with altruistic collectivism. They want to associate the enlightenment with all the worst elements of the left today. This is what the right today represents. Not a defense of individual rights, not defenders of the founding fathers. A defense of religion, a defense of collectivism, a defense of the family. And they attack the left, and the left deserves being attacked, but they attack the left for being too consistent with enlightenment values. But this is exactly the misunderstanding of what the enlightenment means and what reason means. The enlightenment is not about subjectivism. The enlightenment is not about relativism. The enlightenment is about reason. Reasoned individualism. It's about the pursuit of reason and letting reason guide your life as an individual. They refuse to get that. They refuse to acknowledge it because they don't want to accept reason. They're just like the left. They both reject reason. Reason can't guide you. Reason can't tell you what's moral or what's not. Reason can't tell you what's good or what's bad. There is no morality because reason can't produce a morality. So the right is triggered by the left's perceived pseudo-individualism. And they're triggered by their attack on what the right perceives as the fundamental unit of society, the family. They're triggered by this focus on individual happiness. Assuming that's what the left was doing. But in that sense, the right is giving them way more credit than they deserve. And this is Ben Shapiro's relatively much better than the rest of the right. But this is pure primitivism. Individualism is great when it is placed up against the overweening tyranny of harsh collectivism. Do you hear that? Individuals are great. It's great when it's up against the worst kind of collectivism. But as an Indian itself, as an actual viewpoint, it only founded the individualism. Only the set of ideas behind the greatest country in human history, the United States of America, the one that people like Ben Shapiro claim to be supporters of. But it's only good in opposition to the harshest, worst types of collectivism. By the way, super chat, a ton of questions. This is great. We're doing well in terms of achieving a goal that I should probably increase the goal. It should be higher than what I said it. But what I want now, just because there's so many questions, is let's just do $20 and above question. No more $5 and $10 questions. If you want to ask something, make it $20 or above. And I'll get to the questions soon. I want to listen a little bit. What makes the Enlightenment good is the idea that we do have individual spirits and that we can be creative with those spirits. But that was all supposed to be channeled toward protecting your family. Really? Really? That's what Locke was getting at. That's what the founders were getting at. That all that creativity and energy and individual thinking and maybe discovery of truth and science, all of it was really motivated not by truth, not by happiness, not by success, not for production. No, to protect the family. It's all about the family. I should probably give Ben Shapiro a little bit of slack only because he just became a father again. He deserves congratulations. He just had another baby. I think it's fourth. So maybe he's in a family mood given that his wife is about to give birth when he made this video. But he is supposed to be an intellectual. So that's what the Enlightenment was all about. I didn't realize that. And it shocks me that it didn't make it into the Declaration. It didn't make it into the Federalist Papers. It didn't make it into Locke's treaties. It's all about the family. It really was that the family was the unit of society and then within the boundaries of family, you as an individual are supposed to go out and flourish, which is why- Within the boundaries of a family- By the way, it works by the way. Married men earn more than single men because they feel a necessity to go out and protect and defend their families. Really? That's why married men make more money than single men. It's because they're trying to protect their families. Really? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe they should send their wife out to work even more money and they wouldn't have to work so hard. I don't know. This whole way of thinking strikes me as bizarre. This is the way society used to be oriented. It was a balance between Enlightenment individualism and traditionalist family units. A balance between enlightened individualism and collectivism, family units. I mean, this is- This is conservatism. This is the modern rate. And then that balance has been completely upset by the rise of the Internet because that glowing screen makes you- That glowing screen is a narcissistic mirror. You think you're looking on the Internet? You're not. You're looking at things that please you. Oh my God! How can you tolerate that? You're looking at things that please you and pleasing you is not a good thing. That's just narcissism. We don't want to please yourself. All right. That's enough, Ben Shapiro. I guess I played the audio without showing you the video. I should have showed you the video. All right. God, I'm off my game today. So the right is opposed to the left's- The right is more than opposed. The right is obsessed with these issues of- Because it's quote, too individualistic. The right is obsessed with this issue because it challenges the view of family and sexual roles and gender roles. What is Matt Walsh going to do when his wife doesn't have dinner ready for him when he comes home? Because his wife decided she wanted- I don't know. Whatever. Right? It- The centrality of sex and of family and of procreation in the conservative mindset should not be- You know, I don't think we have a full appreciation for how big that is. It's- They're obsessed about it. And they care more about that, much more about that than they care about liberty or freedom or free speech or- and, you know, any of that kind of stuff. You know, the iPhone is just a sample of atomistic individualism, he calls it. And it's a symptom of the decline of religion, which is what they really care about. It's religion and their ability to practice their religion and to some extent their ability to impose their religion. At some point, Ben Shapiro comes out in full force for blue laws. Blue laws, if you remember, are laws that prohibited the opening of businesses on the Sabbath or in the Christian case, Sundays. I remember when I lived in Boston, there were blue laws. You couldn't open your business on a Sunday. Talk about infringement of individual rights. That's Ben Shapiro. That's the right. And Ben Shapiro is considered one of the more pro-capitalist people on the right, at least it used to be. But they don't care about individual rights. They care about family. They care about being anti-left. They care about the rejection of pleasure in any form of individual expression and individualism. It's all to service the family. I mean, I think the best representative of this version of the right is indeed Matt Walsh, who every time- I listen to him, he has to be the creepiest person on YouTube. Creepier, as creepy as any crazy leftists. Anyway, now again, I think there are lots of directions where you take this. There's a lot of things where we've already gone an hour. So I'm going to call it dibs here and go to your questions. And we've got a lot of the super chats. We are still about 160 short of the goals. And we need to start making goals because lately we've kind of been... You guys have not quite... I don't know what's happened. Maybe some of my whales have now been around or have abandoned me. I don't know, but we clearly are not living up to our goals recently. So we need to step up the game and blow through some of these numbers. But anyway, we're about 150 short of the goal. I'm sure this is a topic we'll come back to. Think about... Think about all the things companies do, having a transgender person, pitch beer. Is this the most offensive thing you've ever seen? I mean, the way the right behaved. There are lots of reasons not to drink but light. Most of them have to do with taste. But people's response to the ad is just... They're just freaking out. I think the ad is tasteless. I don't like it. But if all the things that corporate America has done is this the most offensive? No, ESG is much more offensive to me than that, for example. There are lots of other things that are much more offensive. Target, putting their gay stuff all up front. I mean, as long as it's not too explicit for children, as long as it's not too sexualized, why are we so afraid? Again, it's an attack on the family. It's an attack on religion. It's an attack on faith. It's an attack on tradition. It's an attack on... The conservatives are about conserving. This is a point I wanted to make and didn't. Conservatives are about conserving. To them, the idea of a man and a woman is not necessarily based on any... doesn't need to be based on any facts, any reality. It's tradition. And therefore, it must be true. And Ben Shapiro always says in societies in the past, it's always been that XYZ. Well, societies in the past have done it. It must be the way we should do it in the future. There's no other option. So, the fact that there are such traditionalists... Again, conservative is to conserve. It's to keep what exists. And the left is, in some realms, not progressive. Progressive is not the right term. There are agents of change. The left are agents of change. Change for the good, change for the bad, but they're agents of change. And they keep pushing the boundaries and they keep pushing it. And the right keeps wanting to conserve, keeps wanting to move backwards, keeps wanting to live up to tradition. And the left keeps pushing them. And the left keeps getting nuttier and nuttier and nuttier and the things they want to change. And the right keeps getting more and more obsessed with the distant past. And it's a battle that we are going to lose because no matter which side wins, we get screwed. Anybody rational gets screwed because neither side is rational. All right, let's see. Fendt Harper says, Until a rat with two dads is born. I'm not sure what that refers to, but there are now mice with two dads. I told you the story, right? That a Japanese researcher has taken skin cells from a mouse, a male mouse, skin cells from a male mouse and turned them into stem cells and then turned those stem cells into an egg and fertilized that with sperm from a different male mouse. I guess you could have done with the same male mouse. And that has produced an actual baby mouse. So there you go. You can do that. You can have biologically two male fathers, whatever you want to call it. But it requires a little genetic engineering. Oh, so Fendt Harper says, Yeah, that's where you heard it. You heard it in my show. The chat said Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Turns out you can have Adam and Steve. Technology's there. It's going to bring you an Adam and Steve. I mean, a lot of these conceptions that we have, once you have artificial wombs and you have genetic engineering and, you know, it's all in play. It's all in play. And that scares, by the way, that scares the conservatives to no end. To no end. I think it's amazing. But the conservatives are freaked out by stuff like that. Freaked out by. All right, let's see. We've got a lot of questions. Let's start with, let me look for, let's see, go by the ones who put the most money in. But I want to go with, with the ones that have to do with the topic, but that it's hard for me to see that. Okay, Harper Campbell says, I think most of these people are nihilists, waging war against biological identity, not to say this is all the right should be focused on. But degeneracy is not something a healthy, rational society tolerates. I think that's right. But I would argue that the right's obsession with family and the right's obsession with religion and the right's obsession with, the right's obsession with, with collectivism and with the rejection of individualism is quite degenerate as well. But I agree with you. I think most of these people on the left are nihilists. And I think they're now, we've got nihilists on the right as well. That in the name of smashing the left doesn't want to smash everything. By the way, objectivism, co-objectivism is nothing to say about artificial wounds, about where, what you do with stem cells, about what, you know, where sperm comes from, whether you can, two dads can have a baby. There's no, that's science, that's biology, that's engineering. It has nothing to do with objectivism. It's not homosexual engineering. What's homosexual engineering? It's just, it's just, let's say you have homosexuals who want to have a child. Well, one possibility is to convert one of their cells with their DNA into an egg so that they can have a child. They still need to subrogate until we get artificial wounds and then they won't need that. And why is that long? What is so upsetting about that? I just don't, I don't get it. Now, you know, that's what science is allowing us to do. That's what science is allowing us to do. And whether you like it or not, that's coming. And technology does allow you to create more possibilities and more options than nature has allowed us. But isn't that what human beings constantly do is they change their environment to fit what they need so, what they want it to be? They make those changes without mutilating themselves, right? It doesn't involve any mutilation. Take a skin cell and turn it into a stem cell, turn it into an egg and then fertilize it. No mutilation there. No violation of rights there. What's the immorality about it? Where's morality play a goal? If the people who want to do it are rational about wanting to do it, are rational about wanting to have kids, what exactly doesn't work doesn't work there? Jack wants to raise the debt ceiling. All right, let's see. Urban Pocupine says, could there be an opportunity to channel the rights nebulous war and war capitalism into an objective movement towards individualism and free market? They don't seem to understand what they're fighting for against. I agree with the last part. They don't seem to understand what they're fighting for against. But they are coming at it from such a foreign place. They're coming at it from such a place that is unconnected to individualism, individual rights, liberty, freedom, and everything that we believe in when we fight for capitalism. That there's no way, there's no way to channel their energy towards this, because their energy is not about war capitalism. The energy is around collectivism and hatred of the individualism and it's around religion, it's around the family, it's around conserving the past. That's what they're about. So at an epistemological level and at a physical level, the right is our enemy. The right is our enemy. I find it fascinating that so many people in the chat are upset by this notion of turning a male skin cell into an egg cell. That to me is amazing. It's like, you know, it's unnatural. Well, it's unnatural to turn a tree into a house. It's unnatural to turn rock and sand, I don't know, into concrete. It's unnatural to turn sand into silicon. And to run electrons in it and turn that into a computer. It's, wow. Daniel says, additionally, I think there's an epistemological element as part of the left-wing motivation. Yes, I mentioned that. There's almost a glee that you can say you can't know someone's a certain gender. Yes, because the epistemological point is you can't know anything. And anything is whatever you feel like it should be. It's a complete relativism. It's a complete subjectivism. It's the abandonment of any absolutism when it comes to concepts and it comes to identity. So it's an ejection of the metaphysics, our metaphysics, the metaphysics of A is A. Because A is not A anymore. A is whatever you feel like it to be. Whatever you feel like to be. A is. So it's just, yeah. It is fundamentally deeply epistemological. It's the ultimate in the post-modernists success story of C. We told you nothing's concrete. Everything's fluid. Everything. There are no absolutes. There are no principles. There is nothing there. To test your babies are now unnatural. That's pretty amazing. Fascinating to see. Conservative, can't call them objectives. People who think they're objectives, who are ultimately just conservatives. And look, none of what I'm saying is objectivism. None of what I'm saying is objectivism. It's my interpretation, my application, non-interpretation, my application of what I think the objectives specifically suggest. But your book show is not objectivism. Your book show is Iran's attempt to apply objectivism to issues of the day. Issues that face us. Fenn Harper says epistemologically the culture is fighting over various ways, over various ways gender is described in material girl. Yes, I mean, well, I mean it's part of the issue. Stark described four concepts that are considered gender. Do you think gender is sex plus age or social role? Well, it's clearly sex plus age. You know, it's fundamentally sex. But look, I'm not an expert on this. I think there's some really interesting issues when it comes to gender and sex. But I think sex plus age is gender. I don't know that there's a big difference between gender and sex. In terms of the way you use it, I don't think it has to do with role. I don't know exactly what role has to do with it all. So, you know, what does social role mean? Social role in what context? A women who work, you know, by definition masculine. And what is gender? Gender is male, female. But what is femininity? What is masculinity? Femininity and masculinity have to do with the relation of that sex to, you know, the finding characteristic of that particular sex, right? That's what I think masculinity and femininity refer to. By the way, if you want to ask questions about anything, including polygamy, there is a super chat. You can use the super chat. We're still looking for about $47 to reach our goal. But our goal should be, as I said, we should change the goal. That's a new goal. So, we're now officially $397 short of our goal. All right, let's see. Where are we? Jeremy says, I think to the right, this seems like a very concrete bound, axiomatic seeming case of the let's say, don't believe your lying eyes. And they were both viscerally against it. I think that's right. But the left does that on a lot of different things. There's something about this because it relates to sex, because it relates to gender, because it relates to family, because it relates to procreation that really gets them going, that really excites them. And because it's perceived by them as individualistic, that I think is also its individual's identity. We can have individuals having their own identity. We need them to belong to this group. We need them to be part of the collective. So the collectivism in a sense among the right is more explicit. It's an explicit rejection of individualism. The left sometimes pretends to be individualistic, sort of some people on the right. But the new right seems to have abandoned individualism completely. That's for the enlightenment. And we know the enlightenment is corrupt. The enlightenment destroyed this country. The enlightenment is responsible for the left, they tell us. So we reject individualism completely, because the left is individualistic. And what we stand for is collectivism. And this strikes them as individualistic. I can determine whatever gender I want. And you can see it in that documentary that Walsh did on What is a Woman. It's so superficial. It's so silly. It's so stupid. The questions he asked, the way he responds, yeah, I mean, the left is ridiculous. It should be easy to do this. But for Walsh, what it means to be a woman is so superficial and so anti-individualistic. The left isn't individualistic, but the right thinks of the left as individualistic. That's what's so astounding. That's about Ayn Rand. Let's see. Right. Fred Harper says, I personally hold that gender equals six plus age. A adult male is a man. And none of that male is a boy. I think that's right. There's a cultural, social idea of masculinity, femininity in terms of social roles and their heroes and hero worshipers. So I don't think masculinity has to do with social roles. I think it's with your relationship with reality and your relationship to the other sex. And for randomly masculinity was the man's primary orientation towards reality and reshaping reality and changing reality. And the primary orientation of a woman is towards hero worship of a male. But that was, even that, is not really objectivism called objectivism. It's more of an idea in psychology than it is an idea in philosophy. And I don't know if it's true or not. I don't know if that's right. There's something right there. But I think a lot more thinking and a lot more research needs to be done into what that means and how that relates to, because there are people, all kinds of people who are less feminine, more feminine, more masculine, less masculine. What does that actually mean? What traits does that refer to? What traits does that relate to? But I don't think that relates to, I don't think that has to do with social roles. I think that has to do with orientation towards reality and other people. So, and again, I think a lot of thinking still has to be done here. I don't think this is a closed, shut and closed case. I think there's a, we know a lot more about the complexity of sexuality today and it really needs to be thought through. Koch says, both Ben Shapiro and Charlie Koch used to speak in the language of individualism. And now they both are throwing individualism into the garbage, accusing the left of being poor individualism. Yes, I mean it's really, really tragic how we lost the hearts and minds of people like Ben Shapiro and certainly Charlie Koch, to Donald Trump and to the new right. I mean Charlie Koch, I knew, used to know Charlie Koch quite well. And Charlie Koch was really on the, on the cusp of at least on certain issues, presenting an objective case for them. I mean he'd read Ein Rand, he was very pro Ein Rand. He is defensive capitalism. He basically had listened to my talks and was mimicking it, mimicking those arguments. And then he veered with Trump and with Trump bandwagon and with a new right. He realized that that was where real power lay. He realized that that's where he could really become a big shot. And he completely veered away from that individualism and that individualistic perspective. And my guess is he hates Ein Rand today and he hates capitalism today and he certainly hates individualism today. And you know, and even Ben Shapiro was better I think five, six years ago. Certainly on things like capitalism. And capitalism was more important for them. No one says thank you for this. With both the left and the right failing, falling into collectivism. Is liberty even still associated with either left or right? Do individual rights even have a place within the mainstream political spectrum? No, they don't. So you know, I've talked about this many times in the past, but left and right do not mean pro individual rights or anti individual rights. Left and right are basically due forms of collectivism. The entire political map today is collectivistic. There's the collectivists of the left and collectivists of the right. The collectivism manifests itself a little differently on the left and on the right. But it is collectivism and individual rights and individualism has no home, not in the left and not on the right. And it's interesting to see the people who used to be associated with the right, conservatives of the old school who were associated at least some degree with individual rights have no home today. Never Trumpers who can't really back the Santas and can't back the left and can't back Biden and they don't have a home. They don't belong. And they don't. They don't belong to the left or right spectrum anymore. And I've always said the real political spectrum is. The actual political spectrum is collectivism, individualism, collectivism, individualism. And it's where you fall along that spectrum. Today, the left and the right are both just forks on the road to collectivism, two different forks on the road to collectivism. And on the individual side, there's objectivists and there's some, there's some, some small libertarians and some small sea, I guess, conservatives or all type conservatives that are kind of on the track to individualism with objectivists being the real individualists. But that's it. That's it. Left and right are meaningless today. I hate those terms because they represent collectivism, two different forms of collectivism. That's all they represent. Thank you, Norman. Good point. Okay. John says, good show. Thank you, John. Okay. All right. Let's take some of the shepherd chat. Again, we've got really 47 to get to our usual goal of 650. We've got 397 to get to our stretch goal of $1,000, which would be really nice to achieve. By the way, we've only got 60 thumbs up. We should have well over 100 likes. So if you have a chance before you leave, please give the show a thumbs up. It really helps with the algorithms. It helps with the, to get the video out there and to get more people to subscribe and to get more people to discover the channel. So please just give it a thumbs up if you like the show. If you didn't like the show, don't do it. Don't do it. All right. Let's see. Michael asks for $100. Thank you, Michael. Why do people who are clearly not objectives call themselves objectives? What could they possibly gain from other than to subvert our movement for nihilistic reasons or perhaps our movement is growing and they think they can gain notoriety by writing its coattails? Look, people want to, there are lots of people out there who are to some extent at least tribalists that need the comfort of numbers, that need the comfort of a group. And yet they're kind of outsiders and they don't really belong anywhere. And Ayn Rand, they kind of liked Ayn Rand and certain things about Ayn Rand appeal to them and they want to be affiliated with Ayn Rand and they want to be able to call themselves objectives even though they're not. And they deceive themselves into believing they're objectives so that they can belong to this group. And she's legit. She's obviously inspiring. She's obviously super smart. She's obviously done amazing things. And they want to be associated with that success. They want to be associated with what Ayn Rand is. And so they embrace the title objectives even though they're not and even though in a sense they know they're not because it gives them credibility in their own mind and it helps them belong to something. I don't think they are necessarily motivated by nihilism. I don't think they're self-aware enough to think we're doing this in order to destroy a legitimate objectives movement. We're doing this to destroy a legitimate objectives phenomenon. I don't think they think that. I think they're more innocent than that. I do think they are trying to figure it out. They're trying to fit in, but they find it impossible or find it too difficult to turn their back on their tradition or their past or their conservative views or their leftist views or whatever views they tag along. And they can't truly be individualists. They can't truly be independent. They are restricted and constrained into being, you know, they'll mouth the objectivist ideas. They'll believe that they believe them. And as long as the group has them and as long as they feel comfortable in this group for a while, they'll stay there and as soon as another group comes along, as soon as another ideology comes along, it feels better for them, emphasis on feeling, they will flip onto that one. I've seen it happen over and over again. I mean, where are all those alt-right objectivists? Where are all the Trumpist objectivists? Some of them are still here. They're on the chat. Most of them have gone. And do they still associate with objectivism even or they just become alt-right? They just adopted another group. They just moved from one group to another group because that group provided them with more validation for the true beliefs, which were right-wing beliefs, not objectivist beliefs. Where are they all? I mean, my guess is they're all alt-right types. I don't think they even consider themselves. They consider themselves even objectivists. That was a phase. Liam says, have left us being trained to laugh whenever the name I'm in is brought up? They literally all do this. Is there a memo? Do they think this argument for intimidation is supposed to suppress the growth of our ideas? Is it working? I mean, it works to some extent. That is, I think it's, for some people, it turns them off from reading Iron Man. They don't want to be laughed at. They think that respect of what people laugh at him. Why waste your time reading her? So suddenly, at the margin, it reduces readership and reduces interest. I haven't found that everybody does this, by the way. There was a period in which a lot of leftists embraced Iron Man. Oliver Stone wanted to make a movie of The Fountainhead. Other people in Hollywood and other leftists known leftists said positive things about Iron Man while disagreeing with him. But yes, they laugh at him partially because a lot of the people they encounter who are pro-Iron Man come across as obnoxious and laugh-worthy and partially because it's a defense mechanism. Iron Man represents ideas that they really can't challenge. Iron Man represents ideas that really stand in the face of everything they believe in. And the easiest way to dismiss that is to laugh at it. You don't have to, that eradicates the need to actually engage with ideas and actually do the thinking necessary to refuse or to contradict. Mike, thank you, Mike, $50. Hi, Iran. I appreciate the show. Who, in your opinion, has given the best, argued, attempted repudiation of Iron Man's ideas? God, I mean, that's a hard question. Maybe Nozik, the Harvard philosopher, the libertarian philosopher Nozik, the most honest, I think, attempt maybe was his. I think it was particularly good. Yeah, I don't know. You know, it would be good if some of her critics would do that. I think probably her best critics in the sense of people argue against her are probably some of the libertarian philosophers who have actually read Iron Man, engaged with their ideas, and reject them. And I think they're the closest to being in a position to provide a well-argued critique because they actually, they don't, like the left and the right come up with these bizarre interpretations of Rand's views, I mean, complete distortion of her views. They create all these strawmen. The libertarians do that to some extent, but some of it is just real disagreement about fundamentals of philosophy and real misunderstandings that they have of Iron Man. So I think they would be the best. I don't have anything specific. I think they've done some stuff with the Iron Man Society at the Iron Man Society of the American Philosophical Association meetings where they've had some of these guys critiquing Iron Man. You might want to look at, you might want to try to find some of those writings as maybe being, maybe being the best. Schaasbach says maybe when this skin cell to egg conversion tech becomes readily available, some people will borrow J.K. Wallin's discriminatory term, mudblood, to label those children's much to their dismay. I hope not. Yeah, mudblood. Yeah, I mean, the real technology that is going to disrupt society, much more than AI, I think, ultimately, is biotech. I mean gene editing, gene editing before birth, converting cells into egg sperm, whatever. That's where you're going to get real disruption and where you're going to get. The writer's just going to be apoplectic about this stuff. It's not real yet. It's not real for humans. But the right is going to be completely apoplectic. Religion, the pope, it's just going to go nuts. The left hates AI. Now, as I read to you the other day, the right hates AI as well. I mean, there was that right wing writer who wrote about what we need is a jihad. And he purposefully uses the Muslim term, a jihad against AI. But the left hates it more. And this is the right kind of channeling the left. But the right will really freak out when you can start really playing with your own biology, start changing your own DNA and your kid's DNA. That's going to really, and I think, you know, and Z400 Racer says, biotech revolution would be enabled by AI. I think that's right. I think AI makes the biotech revolution much more likely and much more, much sooner than otherwise. Because I think you need that kind of computing power to be able to solve some of the vexing problems and issues with genetic engineering. But wow, the kind of dilemmas that are going to be created by bioengineering is really going to upset people like Ben Shapiro. I mean, this is truly man playing at being God. I mean, it's going to upset many people who, on this chat, the conservative slash objectivist, they're going to be very upset by it. But that, it's coming. It's coming. You might have to rethink some of your concepts because science has made things possible that in the past were not possible. You might, yeah, our conceptual field might have to expand. What a thought. What an idea. And ultimately, it could be that the biotech revolution will lead to the real AI. It will lead to creation of life and maybe creation of intelligent life. And, you know, to me, I don't think you'll ever get consciousness from zeroes and once from just electrons zipping through silicon. But once you start getting into biology, once you start creating life, you start tinkering with life and tinkering with cells and brain cells and create brain cells. I mean, you've got, you can enhance the human brain to an extent where it becomes AI. I don't know. I mean, this is all, you know, I mean, the potential is amazing. And truly it's astounding and amazing and exciting. I wish I was alive to see it. We'll see. And I wish I was alive to see how both left and right go apoplectic about it. All right, Liam asks, glad to see the Santas had the balls to run. Yes, he announced today. I'm going to talk about it tomorrow morning. Did you get a chance to see his full interview on John Stasso? I did not. I think he can beat Trump and govern the country decently if he has the right advisors around him. I saw a bit of, I listened to a bit of his announcement on Twitter. It was a bit of a joke in a sense that he got these softball questions from, planted questions from his fans. But yeah, maybe, you know, we'll see. Until today, he had not impressed pretty much on anything. He is not impressed as a governor in a sense of what he's focusing on and what he's doing. He is not impressed as a thinker in terms of his understanding of individual rights and free speech and how to apply these things. He's not impressed as a campaigner. I'd be surprised if he wins. But it's possible partially because Trump is getting to be completely insane. I don't know if you follow his tweets or his truth stuff. I mean, it really is getting embarrassing. And it might get so embarrassing that people will just look for a say no alternative. And DeSantis might be that say no alternative. The same kind of bad policies or bad focus. But just say no. I mean, Trump, I just saw a tweet today. I can't remember what it was. But just nuts, just nuts, right? And there's a lot of fatigue around Trump. And I don't think Trump can win. I don't think he can win a general election. DeSantis might be able to. He'd have to develop some charisma. I don't see any charisma there. I don't see any charisma. I'll have to check out the Stossel interview. Maybe it's better. James says, I pray 20 years from now objectives will no longer be in such an early friend stage. Me too. Me too. Nice 20 years. I'll be able to see 20 years from now. 20 years I'll still be alive. And who says it's concrete bound to divide up the sexes too rigidly by behavior. A girl across the strength is maligned as masculine. A conservative might consider cooking as feminine. Except then why are some of the best chefs men? Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. Behavior, that kind of behavior is not what defines masculine femininity at all. Some of the best clothes designers are men. Some of the best chefs are men. Actually, the best chefs in the world are all men. And I know women who climb Everest Mountain and do amazing physical feats. And I know women who are amazing entrepreneurs and who are amazing CEOs. And does that make them less feminine? Is Dagny less feminine because she runs a railroad? I think Iron Man would be horrified by that idea. And as JB says, some of the best philosophers are women. The best philosopher was a woman. So, yeah, I mean, it's completely wrong. It is completely wrong to view it as the kind of social, what people call social roles that people have, as defining feminine masculinity. Those are all completely social constructs, social biases. And to write from certain traditions that might make sense in some societies and don't in others, right? And, you know, Dagny, Dagny was a woman, sexy woman. Certainly weird and thought so. Joan Galthoso, Francisco thought so. And yet, she's basically the CEO of a railroad. So, and she's assertive and she's oriented towards reality. And so it's not simple that the orientation of a woman towards hero worship does not is not exclude her orientation towards reality towards changing that reality and being an adventurer. So, in raging. Okay, Michael says, in raging to think what percent of intellectuals for the past 200 years have been conceiving ways to return humanity to dark ages. Yep, it really is sad and in raging and raging is a good term. James says, does foul language follow the soul? I think, I think in a way it does. I think if it's if it's overused, I think if it's if it's constant, I think if it's used in inappropriate ways, it can certainly be a falling of the soul, a falling of your own capacity to think a falling of your own. You know, thought process, your own clarity to yourself. Rhett Henderson, do you see a problem with the white tea gods enforcing an orthodoxy, the YouTube gods enforcing an orthodoxy? Seems like an inquisition when you have to worry about saying in good standing with them. They're a private company. They can do what they want. I really do believe they can do what they want. If they decide that they don't, I don't like it. I don't have to like, I don't think their policies are good policies. I don't think their policies are the right policies. I don't think they should have these standards, but they can. And whether I like it or not, I'm massively grateful to the YouTube gods for creating YouTube and for making it available to me. So my gratitude to YouTube for making it possible to do this far exceeds my upset at YouTube for having rotten standards. I can hold both at the same time. I know, I know it's hard, but I can't. So yeah, you know, it's horrible to get an email from them saying, particularly when it's wrong, but that they have such concrete boundaries and some such limited perspective on the world. I also understand the challenge that they face in terms of misinformation. But I think they're doing it wrong. I think they're executing it wrong. I think the standards are wrong. But I'm still willing to play the game because I think that, wow, what a fantastic platform. What a fantastic opportunity they've given me to express myself on a daily basis to thousands of people at a marginal cost to me are basically zero and a source of income to me. And they've allowed me to monetize all this and they're making that possible. So again, I feel much more gratitude than upset. Robert says, we who are pro individualistic should be the last people to condemn a whole group of individuals because some use the phenomenon to further their ideology. All right. I lost you there some way, Robert. We who are pro individuals should be the last people to condemn a whole group. Who is the whole group of individuals because some use the phenomena to further their ideology? Yeah, I mean, I don't think we should condemn trans people. I don't think that's the... I don't think objectivism. I don't think objectivism should condemn them. If anything, we should feel sorry for them. We should appreciate the harsh reality and harsh condition in which they are faced. We can also think it's pretty... What they're doing by mutilating themselves is pretty brutal and something is problematic about it. It's something to think about. But yes, I agree with you that we should not condemn a whole group. And I certainly don't. I feel for the problems and whether they're psychological, I think in most cases today, or physiological in the sense that there's some screw up in their genes. Either way, it's a problem. And it would be cool if they could fix it. Friend Harper says, PSA, Public Service Announcement. The new intellectual podcast of AOI has an episode on material goal. Yes, with Ankar and Ben, I think. So check that out. They talk about material goal, the book about the trans issue, which I don't think I read the whole book. I read parts of it. I thought it was quite good and interesting. And then, friend Harper says there's a discussion debate with Deidre and Catherine Stark. I haven't seen that. That I would actually like to see. I'd like to see kind of how Deidre approaches defending. I'm not sure what she would be defending. So I'm interested to see what her approach is. So I'll check that out. Oh, by the way, let's just do this at the end. If anybody's interested, I think I told you that Adam has this proposal where he will, he will sponsor show for $1,000. But he's looking for ideas of what he should sponsor from you. So if you have an idea for a show you'd like me to do and you're willing to let us know what that idea is for $20. So this is a way that Adam is incentivizing you to support the show. He will consider that idea as part of it. And he's already got six or seven ideas that you've done in past shows, but he's still looking for more. So if you want for $20 Super Chat, have an idea for a show you would like, you don't have to put up the $1,000. If Adam chooses your idea, he will put up the $1,000. So I'll open it now for any ideas like that that you would like to present. We've still got a lot of Super Chat questions of the $5 to $10 variety. Liam says, many people say they're voting for Trump because he's not establishment. Being a vulgar, unpredictable brute makes someone anti-establishment. Wasn't Hitler anti-establishment? Yeah, I mean, Hitler was. I don't think Trump is Hitler. I don't think that comparison helps us. But yeah, I mean, I agree with you that what Trump brings to the table is not new ideas. It's a vulgar, unpredictable, brutish, thuggish even character. And people find that refreshing because there's an honesty in thuggery. You know, past politicians were thugs that were subtle about it and intellectual about it. His thuggery is more honest in that sense. William von Schadeau, first time Super Chat. Thank you, William. Really appreciate the support. How can you explain to people that capitalism and slavery are two divergent ideas? So many people think capitalism or American wealth is built in slavery. How would you address that thinking? Is that a suggestion for topic for show? Or is that a question that you would like me to answer right now? I'm asking because it came right after my point about proposing show ideas. So let me know in the chat below. And I will, I will either answer it now or put it in my list of potential topics for Adam. Adam Reeves says, Len Conway of the Mead Conway Revolution in VLSI, Microelectronics was mediocre before her gender transition. Great hero of civilization after. Interesting. I mean, did the gender transition have anything to do with that? I just don't know. So William says it's a real question. It's an actual question for now. It's a big question. And I've done a show on this or I've done a segment of a show on it. But let me give you the highlights of it. Basically capitalism by its very definition is the negation of capitalism. Because capitalism is not the system of capital. Capitalism is not the system of, I don't know, markets. That is a very superficial reading of what capitalism is and how capitalism, that term got created even by Marx. Capitalism is the system of freedom. Capitalism is a system of freedom. Capitalism is a system of freedom. Capitalism is a system of governance where the role of the government is the protection of individual rights, primarily property rights, where all property is private. It is a system of governance which is oriented around the freedom of the individual to pursue his life, to pursue his happiness, and primarily to pursue his property and his wealth and so on in the economic world. Slavery is the wholesale denial of individual rights. It's the wholesale denial of individual freedom. So when they say that the two are the same, they're not talking about capitalists. They're talking about some system that might be perceived as the way they hold it. Capitalism is a system by which the rich exploit the poor. Yeah, so if there's such a thing as a system in which the rich exploit the poor, then slavery is part of that system. And there's a sense in which Marx meant capitalism to mean the system where the rich exploit the poor, the capitalist exploit labor. And in that context, yeah, slavery can be part of capitalism. But capitalism is a system of individual rights, of the protection of individual rights. There's so job of governance to protect individual rights. And slavery is the negation of individual rights. So they can't be together. What you need is to redefine capitalism for them. They have to change their perception. If you think about capitalism as free markets, free. Free markets means markets in which individuals are free to make their own choices about their lives. Slaves can't make those choices. Slaves can't be part of a free market. There is no free market in slavery. So that would be the angle. In terms of capitalism or American wealth that built in slavery, that's just historically wrong. Slave labor is inefficient labor. Slave labor is unproductive labor. Cotton production post-slavery was as high, if not higher than during slavery. And the same with any industry. So it's, you know, slavery made the South poor as compared to the North that had no slavery. Why was the North richer than the South? To a large extent because of slavery. Slave encouraged the South to stay rooted in an agrarian society which promoted, you know, basically slavery. Because the North didn't have slavery, it could go on to experiment and embrace and advocate for a, you know, an industrial society which didn't want the need and found, indeed found, slavey opponent. So that's an inkling. I mean there's a whole literature. There's a guy, God I forget his name now. I can't pronounce his name. Ask me again sometime. But there was an economist who specializes in showing that slavery was not, clearly not, the basis of capitalist wealth. England was not primarily funded through the slave trade from profits from the slave trade. The South was poor. When the slave trade went away, England did not become poorer. It became richer. It's just a wrong, the whole way of thinking about it is wrong. All right Troy, thank you Troy. Troy from Australia just did his, he does this pretty much every month. Shows up at one of my shows and puts $500 into the Super Chat. Australian dollars. Thank you. Really, really appreciate that. I wish the Australian dollar was stronger. But that is amazing. That has taken us over my stretch goal. That is fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's amazing. All right, let's keep going. We've still got a lot of questions. A lot of questions. I know some of you are drifting off to sleep, going off somewhere. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. We still have way fewer likes than we should. We should be way over 100 in terms of the show. So thank you Troy. Really, really appreciate the support over many years now. Oh, Andrew just came in. This second handedness factor into both sides obsessing over gender identity. Well, God, it's the collectivism, right? Both sides, both sides, one, particularly the right is responding to the left. They're reacting. Everything is about reacting. Everything is about a response rather than thinking about something new, thinking forward, moving society forward. It's just an instinctual response in a sense. The left dictates the terms. That's the thing that's important here. The left dictates the terms of the cultural debate constantly because the left wants change and is constantly moving towards change. The right wants stagnation and therefore it's not innovating. It's not suggesting new things culturally. So all it does is defend and protect and can do a very good job at it. It constantly loses the cultural battle to the left or at least has over the last 100 years. So that second handedness in a sense is just reactive. But yeah, look, the tribalism is second handed. Everybody follows the tribe. Everybody on the right has the same view of this issue. Everybody on the left has the same view of the issue. That's tribalism. That's second handedness. That's collectivism. That's not thinking for yourself. Thinking as a group. And you can see that in the attacks on JK Rawlins and the attacks of others. It's like a swarm. It's not individuals. It's not people doing thinking for themselves. It's just people mouthing the dogma that they've learned from above. And that's what happens on both the misintegration and the disintegration, the D2 and the M2 of Leonard Peacock's dim hypothesis. They both need dogma to follow. They both need dogma to follow. And that's what they do. They follow the dogma. And that's pure second handedness. Okay, not your average algorithm. Could you do a Thursday interview with Michael Liebowitz? Could you do a Thursday interview? He is an objective's podcaster who's just completed a 25 year prison sentence. He said, Discovering Iron Man is what turned his life around. I'll look into it. I don't know anything about him. So I will look into it. Copy it and paste it. All right. Clark says, Is there any truth to the claim that debt based currency systems lead to extreme inequality in wealth accumulation? No. I don't think so. I don't think there's anything that suggests that a particular type of, you know, currency system leads to more inequality than others. I think the whole focus on equality is wrong. What debt based currency systems, what fiat currency systems lead to is allocation of wealth that is not always reflective of reality in terms of production. But that doesn't mean it's higher on inequality or less inequality. Nobody knows what inequality would be like in a truly free society. There's no mechanism. You know, some economists say competition would write down profits and therefore they'd be less inequality. I'm just not convinced of that. I'm just not convinced of that. Hopper Campbell, democracy allows losers to loop and identify themselves as the public good and get better people to take care of them like pets. Yeah. I mean, it certainly allows people to become parasites off of other people. Absolutely. Clark says, one, is it more important to teach people how to think or to teach them the truth matters? I don't think you can do one without the other. If you don't think truth matters, they won't want to put their effort into turning their minds. Yeah. There's a few things you have to teach them. Truth matters. The truth is available that you can actually discover it by thinking. Right? Let's say you believe the truth is revealed. So the beliefs have to be the truth matters and the truth is knowable through reason, through using your mind. And then you can teach them how to think. But that's implicit in teaching them how to think. If you teach them how to think, what you show them is that truth matters. And what you show them is that it's accessible. And they see it in their own life. So the focus of a teacher should be to teach them how to think. And the, does it matter? Is it a value? Is it possible? That'll take care of itself because that is a consequence of the process. Frank says, in Monday, Python, Life of Brian, Eric Idle's character says he is now a woman renamed and renamed as Loretta. How can this once hilarious idea now be reality? A lot of hilarious ideas become reality. But yeah, it's, it's now a reality. Because a lot of stuff that people comedians make fun of is based on some element of reality. There were always people, always. I mean, I was just at the, where was it? At the God. Not the Fiji Gallery, the other one. The Borgezi Gallery in Rome. And there's the famous sculpture of the, of the hemaphoda, hemaphode. You know, it, and it's interesting because they've turned the sculpture in such a way that you can't see that it has a penis. It looks like a woman lying there. And you only know by the name. But I know the sculptures. I know that if you look at it from a certain angle, there's a penis there where there shouldn't be a penis because it looks like a woman. And there's always been mixed cases. There's always been confused cases. There's always been this kind of biological confusion that's led to psychological confusion. This is not new. What's new is one, the tolerance and B, the elevation of a high moral status, which is what the left has done. Clark says, lack of truth seeking may be a bigger obstacle to the objective's movement than people inability to integrate and use logic. Yeah, but if you see, it goes together. If they can't integrate and use logic, then they can't be truth seekers and then they, their inclination is to think that truth seeking is not worth it because they can't do it. So you can't do the one without the other. They're all integrated. All right, I am getting tired. It's two hours. All right, let's run through these final questions and then call it a night. Is mind control possible if consciousness is not physical? Could technology or software ever be produced to completely control and own someone's mind? I don't, you know, is mind control possible? Suddenly, and a sudden, psychological conditions, you can brainwash somebody. I think that is indeed possible. What are the mechanisms by which that happens? You know, I don't know exactly, but it's a technological duress, I think. Could technology or software ever be produced to completely control and own someone's mind? Possibly. I think it's definitely possible that you could implant some chips into somebody's brain that circumvent free will that I don't know what, and where you just follow commands given to you from the outside. I guess that's possible. Not sure why anybody would do that, but it's possible. Not your average algorithm says, reason is man's only means of knowledge and survival. But is he only conceptual level means of survival? But is it the only conceptual level means of survival? Wouldn't advanced aliens require reason? What else is there? As far as we know, it's all there is. I can't think of anything else. So aliens would need it. If AI ever became conscious and became real intelligence, it would use reason as well. And because of that, I think aliens are likely to be benevolent and AI is likely to be benevolent, because it realizes part of what you realize if you're really, really smart is the win-win nature of other thinking, reason-based biological or non-biological entities. Michael says, is being open-minded always a good thing? Is being closed-minded always a vice? Are these package deals? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if the package deals and I'm too tired to think it through. But no, I don't like the open-minded, closed-minded mentality. You should be a truth seeker. You should look for truth. There's a lot of things that you don't need to entertain because they're just too stupid to entertain and to consider. And therefore, you don't want to be open-minded about nonsense. And you don't want to be open-minded after you've already proved something is wrong. You don't have to constantly re-engage with that thing. But you also don't want to ignore reality and facts. You want to be a truth seeker. A truth seeker is neither open-minded nor closed-minded. James, what is justice to you? How do you define justice? I mean, I'm not going to define justice as treating people the way they deserve, the way they deserve. And what they deserve is based on the value they create or the value to you that they create, spiritual material. So what is their moral character? What they deserve comes from ultimately their moral character. What they deserve in economics comes from their ability to produce. So justice is giving people what they deserve. Given the context. Richard, hey, Richard, haven't seen you in a while. Have you ever read Freedom's Forge by Arthur Hermann? It's on my Kindle or on my Audible. It's one of the other. Haven't read it yet. I really liked Arthur Hermann's Cave in the Light, but it is interesting. It's a fascinating account of how private industry and entrepreneurs created, made America's military production possible in World War II. Yes, I know the theme and I'm really intrigued by it and interested in it, but I just haven't read it even though it's there. Hopper Campbell, did you watch the Stephen Hicks Craig Biddle debate? I cringed almost the entire time. Why would he even do this? He must really be desperate for attention. I did not watch it. I don't intend to watch it. I would cringe the entire time. I don't like, you know, I'm not interested in that debate. I'm not interested in Craig's attempt to defend what people think is the right view. So no, I have not watched it. So this is a good chance to tell you that on Tuesday, Tuesday, I think it's Tuesday, I'll be interviewing or hosting Ankar, Ankar Gatte on the show to talk about closed open objectivism and other contentious or interesting issues regarding objectivism. So that'll be on Tuesday. On Tuesday we'll be talking about open closed objectivism. So I don't know there will be directly relating to the debate. Maybe Ankar knows more about the debate than I do, probably does. But we'll definitely be dealing with the issues at hand that came up in the debate. But we'll also be talking about lots of other issues. But certainly closed open will be a big part of what we talk about. No one asks, part of the reason why Bud Light has become such a meme is also the fact that a head of marketing insulted their customers who disliked the ad. Yeah, I'm sure there's all kind of complicated factors, but the boycott started well before she did that. And she only did that after they already announced the boycott. And yeah, I mean, clearly it was mishandled on every dimension. And it's not clear why you need that ad, right? Why you put a transgender person to pitch Bud Light. It just doesn't make any sense. It's, I mean, a lot of advertising doesn't make any sense. Why do you put kidney clad girls to sell beer? Somebody said that that's how they liked it in this debate around transgender, you know, about the Bud Light. I don't like either. I've always been bewildered by the bikini clad girls and their relationship to beer. I just commercials generally, advertising generally is bewildering to me. I think advertising would be completely different in a rational world, completely different. Because I mean, the fact is, advertising doesn't work on me, not not in the traditional regular way. If you don't take reasons seriously, you view people as vehicles for various social forces outside their control. It's a very Marxist view both sides hold. I absolutely right, Michael. Richard is back. Thank you for your tips on the Pentagon presentation and when well, and I think they were extremely receptive to the idea that deregulation and immigration and national security imperatives, some optimism with the US government. I hope so. I hope so. I'm eager to be optimistic. But that's great, Richard. I'm glad you got a present at the Pentagon. I'm glad. I'm really, really glad you got a good reception over there that's encouraging. Michael said, should we should we never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity? I think I think you have to consider in all those cases. In each case, what is malice and what is stupidity? I don't think you can just associate one for the other and just replace them. I think you need to think about it. I don't think there are easy answers to these things. Eric says, it seems the trans ideology is primarily the primacy of consciousness. This seems something A.R.Y. would talk more about thoughts. Well, I think there is some talk. As we said, A.R.Y. did a whole thing on that book. Material goals on the whole issue of trans. So I think A.R.Y. is addressing it. I think it's not only an issue of primacy of consciousness. I think there's a big part of it is that. I think there's also a psychological, biological issue that needs to be resolved. But yeah, I think A.R.Y. is doing it among the millions of other topics that it did. It did a whole course on CRT and it's got a lot of issues. And a big part of I think the discussion that came up on the book material goals in the context of the trans issue was related to privacy of consciousness. But I also say that I think, and I should have said this during discussion earlier, I just don't think it's the whole trans issue protecting children is what you should do. Other than that, it's just, it's not important. It doesn't affect me. Protect children. And if you want to screw up your life, screw up your life, but it doesn't affect me if you want to screw up your life. So it's a, why create such a storm? Why is it upsetting the right so much? I can disagree with the left about trans without getting all upset and all, you know, obsessed with the issue, which I think the right is. And I think that's reflective of their values versus, yet it's a privacy of consciousness problem. There's a lot of privacy of consciousness. By the way, what is religion? What is religion? Privacy of consciousness? What is the entire left? What is Marxism? It's a form of privacy of consciousness. So almost all fallacies out there, almost all wrong views out there, a privacy of consciousness views. So it's all a battle over these kinds of issues. All right, I need to go to sleep. I'm fading here. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Troy. Thank you, Michael for the $100. Thank you, a bunch of you for doing $50. Thank you for all the supporters. Thank you, Gail and many others who gave without asking a specific question. And we blew away the target. So thank you, it's been a while since we did that, so it's great to see. I will be back tomorrow morning and tomorrow night. Don't forget tomorrow night. I'm interviewing Aaron Smith on stoicism. Stoicism. I know a lot of you have had questions about stoicism. Tomorrow is your opportunity to ask and discuss and debate. And Aaron is also a foodie. So if you have any questions about being foodie, and he's also a fan of classical music, and he's also a philosopher, so there's a lot of questions you can ask him. Join us tomorrow night.