 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow and this, what is it? It's Tuesday, almost at the end of November, second show today. So a little, little tired, but I hope everybody's having a great start for the weekend. Thank you Robert, Robert's right, right off the bat with some support. I appreciate that. Catherine as well, Catherine even before Robert, she, Robert's second. Catherine, Catherine came in first. All right, so yes, today we're going to talk about funny fathers, whether we should forget about them. And I saw Napoleon, the movie on Sunday. So I thought I'd give you a review of the movie as well. Qua, Qua, Qua movie and Qua history and the rest. Anyway, we'll talk about Napoleon, the movie and then I do one more movie review. So I will also be giving, talking about Wrath of Khan. So if I forget to do Wrath of Khan, because I've been meaning to do it for a while and, and keep forgetting. So somebody slapped me, remind me to do Wrath of Khan. Shahzad, if you're there, remind me Wrath of Khan. All right, so I read a lot of stuff. And from a lot of different sources. And somehow, and I can't even remember how I came across an article with the title, forget the founding fathers. That's good clickbait for somebody like me. That's a good title. What the hell? Really? You serious? Forget the founding fathers? What are you nuts? So I read it. And it's, this is an article in a new magazine, relatively new magazine called compact magazine. And it's by Michael Lind. I think, I think I've analyzed, I think I've talked about another article by Michael Lind before. He tends to say what a lot of people, other people don't want to say or fear saying. Michael Lind is far from a lefty. He's far more righty than a lefty. Compact magazine is also an interesting magazine. It's a magazine that, here I'll tell you, I'll read you the note from the founders. Our editorial choices are shaped by our desire for a strong social democratic state, the defense community, local and national, familial and religious, against a libertine left and a libertarian right. A name evokes our aspiration and defines its limits. A compact is a political union drawing together different people for common and. It is neither a contract nor a covenant, neither a market relation nor religious solidarity. It depends not on shared blood, but on shared purpose. We are concerned with advancing this properly political form of solidarity. We still don't have any content. We believe that the ideology of liberalism is at odds with the virtue of liberality. We oppose liberalism in part because we seek a society more tolerant of human difference and human fragility. Faility, sorry, failure. That is why, though we have definite opinions, we publish writers with whom we disagree. Compact would challenge the overclass that controls government, culture and capital. Whoever does this is bound to be called radical. They have a good view of radical. Radical means at the root of things. Who they are, the main force behind a compact is Saab Ammari. Saab Ammari is an influential writer thinker on the American right. He was involved with national conservatism, but then he really was too right for national conservatism. So he's more involved with the integralists. But this is a, I think becoming a powerful voice on the American right compact. Published as a lot of different authors, but primarily authors that you would consider of the right in one form or another. And Michael Lind is one of those, although again, he's not traditional in any kind of way. The article asks, it starts out with questions like, you know, what would the father think of today's America? What would they invite us to do in domestic policy, in farm policy? Would they be proud of contemporary America? And then he goes on to say the answer to all these questions is the same. Who cares? Seriously, who cares what James Madison would have thought about Internet regulation? Who cares what Thomas Jefferson might have said about the war in Ukraine? He goes on, the cult of the American founding, the cult of the American founding has no parallel in other English speaking democracies. American political ancestor worship in which the founders like a cloud of ghosts hover over our shoulders, smiling in approval or shuddering in disgust. The cult of the founders in its present form is only a few generations old. Modern founderism is a relic of the second half of the 20th century. It provided what he considers a non-racist definition of the American nation during the Civil Rights Revolution and supplying the American state with a missionary creed that could rival Marxism-Leninism during the Cold War. I mean, according to Michael Lind, America basically was defined around racial grounds for much of the 19th century. It was the land of, you know, Brits and Germans and Aryans basically. It then got this inflow of southern Europeans which created a real angst and real challenges. And then of course it had a challenge itself with the, it was challenged by the Civil Rights Movement. All of this created an identity crisis because you could no longer identify yourself as just white or even white northern European. Now there had to be a new identity for the nation, that new identity for the nation was found in the founding fathers. But he says the equation of American identity with political beliefs makes no sense. Individuals in other countries can believe in the ideas of the American founding however defined, but that doesn't make them U.S. citizens. Absent legal immigration and naturalization. Nor is there any procedure to strip citizenship from Americans who think the King George or Jefferson Davis was the good guy in Washington or Lincoln or the villain of American history. So, you know, all the founding fathers did is, he says they served the useful social purpose during the Civil Rights Revolution and the dismantling of the anti-Jewish quotas in Ivy League universities. This is pretty bizarre. At the same time it provided an alternative to the traditional tectonic Protestant version of American national identity. Post-war democratic universalism, that's how he defines against the founding fathers, was worked up into an evangelical secular creed that could contrast Marxist Leninism in the Cold War struggle to win the hearts of minds of people in post-colonial Africa, Asia and the Middle East. So the Federalist, the Alexis, the Tocqueville, all of that were just jinned up in order to help America find its identity during a period of racial angst and in order to differentiate itself from the Marxists and the communists overseas. It was more pious stunt than anything else. And really, nobody really believed in it, right? Even after World War II, nobody really, really, you know, admires the founding fathers. I mean, the left in America was uninterested in the founding fathers, even post-World War II. Libertarians, he writes, had little use for either Jefferson agrarians or Hamilton's developmentalism or neo-Milkantilism and found their profits in modern emigres from Russia, Iran, or Austria, Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek, not the early American republic. He ignores Iran's writing about this, but anyway. So the only two groups that found any kind of affinity to the founding fathers were American populists and the Buckley Goldwater Reagan fusionist or movement conservatives who fave an incoherent, makes-a-farm policy hawker-ness, Christian conservatism and libertarian economics, as if any of them believed in libertarian economics. That would be something. But he says American populists, they don't really care about the founding fathers. They care about the idea of a revolution. They care about the idea of guns and fighting off the British and anti-elites, right? The anti-elitism. They really don't care much about the elites that actually founded the country, the founders themselves. On the other hand, the conservatives don't care about the revolution. They just care about the constitution. They've turned it into like a Ten Commandments and they have let it deny and restrict the ability of the government to provide a lot of services and a lot of goodies to the American people. His conclusion in the end, he says there is no basis for worshiping or admiring or using the founding fathers as a standard for Americanism. Ultimately, it's meaningful. It's meaningless. There's some kind of history worship that means nothing. And we should stop caring about the founding fathers. We should start thinking about the founding fathers, stop looking at the founding fathers. Yeah. He writes that the conservatives, by the veneration of the declaration, have teaching the American people that shall not have nice things like living wage, labor unions, guaranteed access to inexpensive healthcare or adequate social insurance. All, all, all plaques of the new rights. They're all things that the new right want to have. This is the sense in which he's not a leftist. He is part of the national conservatives who all want these things. He's part of the integrationists who all want these things. He is part of a new right that wants statism, that wants the government to give us goodies that believes that is the role of government. I wish, I wish that saying that you want living wage, labor unions, guaranteed access to inexpensive healthcare, adequate social insurance, was a left wing, exclusively leftist, you know, belief, but it's not anymore. Not anymore. This is the belief of Soha Ramari. This is the beliefs of the up and coming young radicals of the right, not of the left. These are the radicals of religion. And they will explain to you in religious terms why living wage, labor unions, guaranteed access to inexpensive healthcare and even environmentalism are good things. This is the new right. This is the right that I've been warning you about that combines leftist economics or big chunks of leftist economics with nationalism and religion. I told you the other day, nationalist, nationalist, socialist, right? Nationalist, socialist. There's no problem with the right in its certain forms embracing socialist, socialist, socialist agenda items. And this is also consistent. This is very consistent, by the way, with Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson carries not about defining fathers. He does not define America in terms of defining fathers. Tucker Carlson is a proponent of a living wage, labor unions, guaranteed access to inexpensive healthcare or adequate social insurance. Tucker Carlson embraced, and I can find you the video if you don't believe me, embraced Elizabeth Warren's plan, economic plan, when she ran for president in the 2020 election against, when she ran in the primaries against Biden. Tucker Carlson embraced her plan and said he basically read her entire plan and couldn't really disagree with much. So this is not some lone voice out there that nobody reads, nobody cares. This is a phenomena. The left, if you will, has never cared about the founding fathers. The right has always made noises about caring about the founding fathers and about elevating the constitution, but also the declaration and the founding and the founders and the federalist papers and Tuckville. But that is fading. Tucker Carlson, that episode that he did about what makes America America that I told you about, that I showed you, didn't just tell you about, I showed you the whole episode. The whole rant, where he talks about America being a beautiful land, and that's what defines America, and the land of God, and that's what defines America. Because what we have today is an anti-intellectual right. We have a right that rejects ideas. Ideas is the foundation of anything. Ideas as driving history. They embrace whatever, expediency, pragmatism, religion, nationalism, but they know religion and nationalism are not really ideas. This is the right of Tucker Carlson. This is the right that I would argue the presidency of Trump elevated. This is the right that Trump in a sense created, that Trump's pragmatism made necessary. He needed the kind of people to fill in the ideas for what he was bringing forward. These are all institutions. This, if you look at the Cassas Institute, I forget the name of the institute that Cassas founded, and there's probably a dozen, half a dozen to a dozen institutions that have come about since during the Trump administration and since, all trying to present Trump's pragmatism, Trump's nationalism, Trump's populism, Trump's statism as American, and providing the economic justification and economic basis for it, providing the philosophical, the historical, the ideological basis for it. And compact as one of those, it's one of those that were made possible and gained an audience because of Trump, because of Trump's success. And because of Trump's, in a sense, pivoting of the American mind away from the Tea Party, which was constitution, founding fathers. The idea of America to America, the land of beautiful things and the land that I was born in, they would say I wasn't born here, and the land that has roots in Christianity and in some vague notion of Europeanism or being European. I mean, it's astounding to get from the right somebody says, forget about the founding fathers. But this is the new right. Notice that in America's presidential debates, and I've been saying this for years and years and years and years over a decade now, never mention of the concept of individual rights. Maybe once in a while, the Constitution comes up, at least in the days that Rand Paul or Ron Paul were on the debate stage, the Constitution would come up, but not individual rights. The idea that America is a land of ideas. The idea that America is America because of ideas. The idea that America was founded, as Ayn Rand said, as the only moral nation in human history based on a moral idea. The idea of individual rights, you know, would not, you know, it would not even, they can't even imagine it. They're anti-intellectuals. They're pseudo-intellectuals. pseudo-intellectuals under my ideas, which is what intellectuals deal with. So let's be very clear what America is, or maybe it was, maybe it isn't anymore, maybe that's gone, maybe that's an old perspective on America. But America was, it was the land of the founding fathers. The founding fathers set something very special in motion. The founding fathers created something unique in all of human history. Changed the way the world thought about politics, about the world of government, about the world of the state. The founding fathers shaped an ethos that was then manifest itself in the massive economic and population growth of the 19th century in the United States. Manifested itself in the great wealth creation. Manifested itself in the defense and protection of individual rights. Manifested itself in a civil war that ended slavery. Manifested itself in the creation of the most powerful, richest, most prosperous, most successful country in human history. The founding fathers set an idea in motion, the idea of individualism, the idea of the sanctity of the individual, and the idea that the world of government was to protect the individual's life, to protect that sanctity. That individuals were free, free to live their lives based on their own judgment, in pursuit of their own values, ultimately in the pursuit of their own happiness. The founders were revolutionaries. They were real radicals. And they shaped, they concretized, but then they shaped the sense of life. That not only shaped the sense of life of the people who lived in America post-revolution, but all the lives and the sense of life of the people who emigrated to America during the 19th century and 20th century. America is the land of individual rights. America is a land of liberty. It's a land of freedom. It's essential characteristics of liberty and freedom, even when the founders didn't fully understand them. As they didn't with regard to slavery, as they didn't with regard to education, Thomas Jefferson supports public education, as they didn't with regard to a lot of things, but their sensual characteristic, the thing that identifies them, that essentializes what America is, is liberty and freedom of the individual, not some liberty of freedom from a foreign government, from a king, but we want our king, but a rejection of kings. And again, it is the founding fathers. I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but there is a sense in which Hamilton, I think, you know, Hamilton and Washington could have, they could have coordinated, they could have made Washington king, and most Americans would have accepted it. But Washington, as a founding father, rejected that notion. He didn't want to be king. That was the whole point of the revolution, not to have kings, not to replace one king with another and call their freedom, but to eliminate kings per se, to eliminate authoritarianism per se, to create an executive branch that was fairly weak, in the name of individual liberty, individual freedom. That's what defines America. That's what makes America. And that is the founders. And many intellectuals and some politicians of later ages that kept that tradition, kept those ideas alive, because people in the courts and other places who kept their ideas alive without keeping them alive, they would have died, struggling to survive today. But for that one has to have an appreciation of ideas, of how ideas shape lives, how ideas shape politics. So, you know, he asks in the beginning here, he asks, you know, what would, what would James Madison have thought about internet regulation? Well, the question really is, what are the principles by which James Madison thought about any issues like this? What are the principles in play? What are the ideas at play? What are the rights being protected or being violated? So it's not an issue of what James Madison would have thought about a particular, because that's hard to tell, and it's irrelevant. But what is relevant is, what are the ideas that James Madison, the universal principles that he would have brought to apply to consideration of that particular concrete? Who cares what Thomas Jefferson might have said about the one Ukraine? I do. I would have found it fascinating. But again, we know Thomas Jefferson's approach to the foreign policy, again guided by the idea that the role of the government is to protect individual rights of its citizens. Well, how would you view the one Ukraine in the context of the role of the government to protect the individual rights of American citizens? That's not a cult of American founders. That's identifying the American founders as unique thinkers in human history. As thinkers who applied the principles that were discovered by other intellectuals during this era, applied them to governance, applied them to politics, applied them to the world. And if only don't we all wish we had just one politician who would apply them today to talk about those principles, those ideas, and how to apply them to the world as we have it today? How do you apply the principles of individual rights to the challenges we face? What considerations should you think about with regard to Internet regulation, with regard to war in Ukraine, from the perspective of individual rights? Now, of course, if you want to dive much deeper into this, get the textbook on Americanism which Jonathan Honing has published with not only Ein Rand's famous essay but also essays by many other intellectuals applying the principles of America that Ein Rand identified and that implicitly in many cases the founding fathers identified and created in this country and set this country in motion and that still animate the best parts of this country. So you can read Americanism where a lot of that is applied to questions like Internet regulation in the war in Ukraine, not those particular concretes but other concretes at that level. And then I think Brad Thompson has done a lot of work on what is America, Americanism, the founding, what they actually stood for, what they represented, and you could read his work. But this is a sad and distressing phenomena. The left long ago had given up on the founders. The left disagrees with the founders. The left fundamentally disagrees with the idea of individual rights and therefore rejected the founders and has moved on, embraced indeed Marx and now postmodernism as a replacement for the principles of the Enlightenment and the principles of the founders. The right had lost all really connection to the founding principles. Long ago the right had already abandoned the idea of individual rights of guiding the country based on the principle of individual rights but they gave lip service to the founders. And they venerated the constitution or at least an interpretation of the constitution divorced from the principle of individual rights, not a particularly good interpretation of constitution but an interpretation of the constitution. And that lip service and that defense of the constitution helped I think keep this country alive. It helped keep the founders in the memory of Americans. It helped keep the constitution as a living political document relevant to our time. It put people in the courts that had respect for the Bill of Rights and respect for the constitution, at least again they floored interpretation of it, but that's better than a complete rejection of the constitution which the left has or complete want to rewrite it which the left has. But if the right too abandons the founders and if the right too abandons the constitution which Michael Lind is calling for and I believe that many on the right today would embrace particularly again the nationalists and the integralists and others and the Trumpists would love to get rid of the constitution, allow him to do a lot of things he'd love to do that the constitution doesn't allow him to do. If we lose that connection, that historical connection as weak as it has been then we just become another country. We just become another democracy. We just become another pressure group, political democracy where it's just group against group against group. Now we're ready that to a large extent, but there's some checks and there's still elements of that spirit of liberty and spirit of the founders in many Americans today. We lose that, we lose America. And that's basically what Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, Michael Lind, Soha Bamaari, Yom Khazoni, Patrick DeNeen, Vimoul in Harvard, all of these guys are arguing for. So yes, America, the concept of America, the idea of America, as I think manifests in the founders, in the kind of debates that they had, in the kind of arguments that they had, in their writings and in the constitution and declaration that they left to us, they represent fundamentally what America is. So I say, forget the founding fathers, no. The more we forget the founding fathers, the more we forget what America is, the more we sink, the more we become just another country, the more we lose. No, we should remember the founding fathers, we should embrace the founding fathers, we should study the founding fathers, and we should fundamentally embrace the idea of America that they instituted, that they created. The reason the founding fathers of other countries don't matter is because the founding fathers of other countries didn't, were not ideological. They didn't establish a country based on an idea. That's what makes the founding of this country so unique, so different. These are men of ideas that grounded an entire country on an idea, incredibly successful one. We're still benefiting from that idea to this day. Imagine if we had no First Amendment. I mean, hard to imagine because it would be such a disaster. Alright, Adam Campbell says, Sabah Mali seems to want to replace antiquated individualism of the founding fathers from 250 years ago with progressive collectivism ideas of religion 2,000 years ago. Yes, he's a real conservative. He wants to conserve way back. I mean, conservatism is always battling. What do you want to conserve? Well, he wants to conserve 2,000 years ago. But yes, Sabah Mali is, I don't know what he defined himself, but he's a progressive collectivist is right. He is a socialist conservative. He is a religionist. He is a converted Catholic, like many of these integralists, almost all converted Catholics. He is a real piece of work. I mean, a really nasty character. And yet he has huge influence, huge presence on the right. This is the new right. He has a massive following. But you ignore him at your own power. You ignore him at your own power. And you ignore his influence at your own power. So, if you can't see, if you don't take him seriously, that's fine. It is your future. Alright, let's see. Yeah, Sabah's latest thing is attacking Nikki Haley, going after Nikki Haley, which makes sense, and celebrating good builders. Alright. Thank you, Adam. Yeah, we have a goal, as you know, a super chat goal. So please consider supporting the show. We've got about 100 people on, we have to get to 650. We've got a lot of $10 and under questions. I appreciate the future questions to be, you know, $20 and above, because otherwise it's going to be a long night because we've got so many of these five and $10 questions. Alright, so on Sunday, I want to see the movie Napoleon. And it's a big movie. Ridley Scott is the director. Ridley Scott is one of the most well-known directors of the last 40 years, I guess. He's made a lot of classic movies. And he has made this epic two and a half hour movie of Napoleon. Now, there's a lot of ways you could make Napoleon, and I guess the choice was made that the story of Napoleon would be told through his relationship with Josephine. Josephine was his empress, who he later divorced, but they stayed friendly and they corresponded for a long time after that divorce. They divorced because she could not bear him children. So he married, I can't remember, somebody, the Austrian, somebody who gave him, who gave him, bore him a son. So this is a story that tries to tell, it's a movie that tries to tell the story of Napoleon really from the French Revolution or from the towards the end of the French Revolution, all the way through his own death. So through the rise and fall and rise and fall of Napoleon. Unfortunately, I think that the movie fails on almost every front. I can't think of any front that it really is a success. It fails, I think ultimately is history and we can talk about why. But more importantly, it fails as movie making, it fails as a movie. It's mainly just boring. It has no theme. It doesn't add up to anything. It doesn't tell you anything. It's, you know, what's his name, who portrays Napoleon. Somebody will tell me and chat, his name is just slipped my mind. His, Joachim Phoenix, thank you, Joachim Phoenix. His acting is wooden. And now he's doing this on purpose. It's unemotional on purpose. It's supposed to be Napoleon after all. But it doesn't, but the whole point of this movie is to convey the relationship between Napoleon and Josephine, a romantic relationship or at least he loved her. It's not clear that she loved him. But why did he love her? What did he love about her? I mean, the sex scenes are ridiculous. Maybe they correspond to some truth, but they're just not interesting. If you're going to do a movie about Napoleon, choose a thread that's interesting. I mean, it was just his relation with Josephine is just not interesting and doesn't add up to anything. He loves her, but she doesn't really love him, but she's attached to him and she's dependent on him and she writes letters to him and he writes letters to her. And he professes her love, his love to her constantly, but you never get a sense of the nature of that love or any kind of manifestation of that love. It's just a very, very empty, emotionless movie. Even the battle scenes are not very impressive. Maybe a common theme to Michael Lynn's article is there no ideas in the movie. There's no conception of what the French Revolution was about, what Napoleon was about, why so many people in Europe were infatuated with him, why he could rally the troops behind him other than his military genius. What was it that made people follow him into battle? What did he stand for at the beginning? Did his ideas change at any point? Did he just win his battles because of his genius? Why was he so hated? What was about what he represented that was hated? Was he a man of the Enlightenment? Or was he the anti-enlightenment? I mean, these would have been interesting ideas, even if they were just surfaced and indicated that some of this was going on in the background and the movie does none of that. There's none of that. The movie is a bad history movie because it's too episodic to get any sense of the history. And I'm not talking about whether the history is accurate or not. I don't really care. But my wife told me after the movie, she said, if somebody doesn't really know the history of that period of time, they would have known what's going on. Too episodic. Too arbitrary. There's no connecting theme. There's no connecting thread. There's no story. Since a movie with no emotion, you really don't care for Napoleon. He's not a person you care for. There's no theme. There's no thread. There's some battle scenes. Some of the battle scenes are pretty good. There's a few tidbits that are interesting. I did not know how Napoleon became famous, his first battle with the British, where he defeats some thoroughly, is really interesting. But I really didn't learn anything significant about history. It really is just empty. Empty. Which is sad because two and a half hours, massive amounts of talent, huge investment. I don't know how many tens of millions of dollars it cost to make this. But you could have told an interesting story. There's something here to be told. I mean, Napoleon is one of the most important figures in the history of the last 250 years. And understanding him, understanding why he rose, why he fell, would have been interesting. But there was none of that. Really none of that. So very disappointing. Negative review for two and a half hour. Big production. One of the worst I've seen. Usually at least they get me on the grandeur of it and the special effects and the music or something. Here there was nothing to commend the movie for. Literally nothing. I tried walking out to think of, OK, what are the positives? What did I enjoy? What did I like? Nothing. Nothing really came to mind. But there really is, I mean, this is the thing. We live in an anti-ideological era. We live in an era that is anti-ideas, anti-themes, anti-perspective. You got the same thing a little bit in Oppenheimer, that much better movie, by the way, much, much better movie. But no point of view. No commitment to any kind of ideological stand. No will, this is what I believe from the filmmaker. Nothing really. Even though ideas were at the heart of that movie because of the focus on communism. All right, let's talk about Star Trek. Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan. Star Trek, this is the second movie. It is, in a sense, a sequel to the episode, the Star Trek episode in which Khan is introduced. And this is really a continuation of a story that starts... I'm pronouncing Khan wrong. Anyway, so be it. Everybody knows what I'm talking about. This is a story where Captain Cook encounters Khan in a previous, in the regular season, in an episode, and ultimately strands him and his crew on some desolate island somewhere. Oh, he's doing the Shatna scream. Some desolate island, some desolate planet somewhere. And in this movie, Khan is discovered. He then managed to take control of a spaceship and challenges basically the enterprise and is out to seek revenge against Shatna, against Captain Cook. So the movie is basically about revenge. And I think it does a really good job. I think of all the movies. This is maybe the best movie of Star Trek. Although, when you watch the old Star Trek, including the movies, the special effects are so ridiculous that it's hard to take these movies seriously completely. But, granted that, it's a story. This might be the best of the Star Trek movies. It's definitely a story about revenge and how revenge that is driven by emotion. Revenge that is driven by hatred. Revenge that becomes your superior value, your top value, is self-destructive, is ultimately going to destroy you. And one of the things this movie actually illustrates really, really well is this is one of the best movies in terms of one of the best Star Trek episodes really, in terms of Captain Cook being supremely rational and constantly thinking and not getting swayed by the emotion, by fear. Whereas Khan is constantly, constantly driven by emotion and instant gratification and hate and the desire to destroy Captain Cook, desire to destroy the enterprise. It ultimately leads him to making stupid mistakes, coming to irrational decisions that ultimately leads to his complete destruction. So actually, a really good story. I mean, it's different than the kind of revenge you see in the Counter-Monitor Crystal. Counter-Monitor Crystal. I don't know if you've ever read the Counter-Monitor Crystal, but that's a great book and there are movies of it that are pretty good. But the Counter-Monitor Crystal is, in many respects, the flip side of Khan. That is, if you take a rational approach to revenge, you think it through. You plan it carefully. You take your time. You apply reason and rationality to revenge. Then it can be incredibly successful and incredibly worthwhile. But Khan is driven by emotion. And if anything, the theme of Star Trek II is emotionalism will lead to destruction. Emotionalism in the service of revenge will lead to destruction. Whereas rationality in the service of revenge can lead to revenge, which is what happens in the Counter-Monitor Crystal. Again, a book I highly recommend. I think it's very good. All right. Shazba, thank you. I enjoyed watching Rath of Khan. I encourage you guys to watch it. It's a good movie. All right, I have a question here. It's been sitting on my desk for a while. It was sent to me by PayPal. So let me do this. And then I'll take the super chat questions. We're way behind. So I'm hoping there are more $20 or above questions that come in so we can catch up and at least get closer to our goal. If we're not going to make the goal, let's at least try and get closer to it. Hopefully, you still have questions for me. You're not all questioned out. Let's see. I'm constantly debating pro Hamas people online. And just now one of them said that Israel did start aggression and named the Ilgun King David Hotel in Jabotinsky. My reply was the 99% of the aggression was started by Arabs. As I said all along, and that some rogue fascist group actions does not change the general narrative, which is that basically Israel is always only shown aggression in response to aggression and threats and terrorism started by others. What would you say differently? I mean, I think that's basically right, but I wouldn't give them the idea that the Ilgun King David Hotel in Jabotinsky were fascist. Jabotinsky certainly was not a fascist. He was a classical liberal. The closest Israel has come to a classical liberal politician. He was an advocate of markets. He was an advocate of, you know, he was a scientist. He was an advocate for the creation of Israel and believed that Israel and I think justifiably and I think history has proven him right. He believed that Israel to be successful, to be a successful country, to be a country that can survive over the long run must be a strong, militarily strong country. So Jabotinsky is one of the good guys, not one of the bad guys, and don't let them tell you otherwise. The Ilgun God, now I'm fading. There was Etzel, there was Lech and the Ilgun. Ilgun was not a terrorist organization. Ilgun was a self-defense organization. During the British mandate over Palestine, the Jews were being oppressed by the British and certainly after 1936 when there was an Arab uprising, they were being killed by the Arabs. The Ilgun was an organization that was set up to protect Jews. It was set up to defend them and it was set up to urge, including through military action, the British to leave and fulfill their promise to establish a Jewish state and to leave a Jewish state behind them. The Ilgun was often used against the British. It was not used in an aggressive form against the Arabs, but only in a self-defense orientation. Now there were other more extreme organizations, militant organizations, the Lech and the Etzel, which were more aggressive both towards the British and towards Arabs. They took their self-defense in a more aggressive way and they committed what some people considered terrorist activities, but the Ilgun never did. Indeed, the King David Hotel is a great example. The King David Hotel was a hotel where a lot of British officers and British commanders stayed as part of the effort to try to encourage the British to leave. The King David Hotel was bombed. A bomb was placed inside the hotel, but they called the hotel. They told them, there's a bomb in the hotel. You should evacuate. And the response to the British was, we don't take orders from Jews. They refused to evacuate. The bomb went off and some people died. And of course that was considered this massive, horrible terrorist attack. But the history suggests they did everything they could to prevent people from dying. It was more of a warning and yet the British's abstinence around it is what caused fatality. So the King David Hotel is not an example of a fascist group. It's an example of a group that cared about human life, but was trying to send a message to British, get out enough, leave. Your mandate is over. And look in the hotel, the British administrative headquarters for Palestine was housed in the hotel. So this was not a bombing of a hotel. It was not a bombing of a civilian target. It was a legitimate military target. So again, no comparison. There's nothing negative about the King David Hotel attack or Jabotinsky. So I wouldn't even grant them that. They're wrong about even that. Alright, let's turn to your super chats. Adam has come in with a $50 question. Thank you, Adam. Let's see. Have you talked about World War II mini series on Netflix? All the light we cannot see. I found it inspiring and filled with comments on reality, finding positivity in the international world and fighting for one's belief with a watch. Great imagery also. Yes, I actually have talked about it. I've talked about it in a couple of shows, I think, recently. I loved the show. I thought it was fantastic. It's beautifully made. It's really well acted. It illustrates what happens in war. It's a great illustration of this idea of bombing civilians. Think about it, the allies are bombing allied civilians, the bombing French civilians. If you remember during the series, the guys from the French underground all get killed from a bomb from the allies. And the French resistance is telling them, bomb, bomb, bomb, even though we might be killed. So don't talk to me about killing of civilians, innocence in war. That's how you win wars. Real freedom fighters. For example, in Gaza right now, there were real freedom fighters. They would say, please, Israel, destroy Hamas. Do whatever you can to destroy Hamas so we can get out from under them. That would be real freedom fighters in Gaza. But yeah, I agree with you completely. It's benevolent. It's interesting. It's usually not interesting. These shows are not interesting. It's original. It's another thing about shows, really original. And it had a positive theme about sticking with it and holding to your values and surviving and kind of an anti-substition theme. It made the Nazis out to be really evil. But it also allowed for one of the Nazis' soldiers to find redemption. It also, the two heroes in the story, both attracted to a radio broadcast emanating from France. So I don't want to give too much away. That is a radio broadcast by a guy who calls himself the philosopher. And it's what unites them and it's what drives them and what gives them the courage to face the obstacles that the war presents is the philosopher and philosophy and the idea of light, enlightenment of what is possible in life. Again, there's, I think, a very touching love story in it and a story of redemption. Yeah, I mean, God, I wish there were a lot more TV shows like that. It was just a pleasure. So yeah, I encourage all of you to see it. It's on Netflix. It's called All the Light We Cannot See. I wish a lot of people watched it, so Netflix would be encouraged to make more shows like it. It's probably a British show. It's not an American show, I think, set in France. Thomas, even with all its self-imposed restrictions and concerns for international opinion, can Israel still win, destroy Hamas and create greater security for itself? Sure, it can. Will it? I don't know, but it can partially because Hamas is weak. And plus, what a lot of the international community and the pressure and the altruism and all of that might do is what it might actually do is cause it to win, but at a greater cost to itself. Many more soldiers are going to die than have to die, than should die. So, you know, that's part of how it'll win, if you will. And of course, the win will not be complete. That is why they might kill the Hamas leadership and they might get rid of many of Hamas' troops and many of Hamas' soldiers, thousands of them, tens, you know, many thousands of them. Will it change the minds of Palestinians? Will it convince the Palestinians they have no chance? Will it convince the Palestinians that Allah has abandoned them, which is what it needs to do? And that says no. I mean, you can see that right now and, you know, I don't know if you've seen the pictures of the hostages being released. And as they're loaded onto Jeeps, Hamas is offloading them onto the, you know, the international red cross that's taking them across the border. The Palestinian people are there, cheering at them, yelling at them, throwing things at them, at the hostages. And if Hamas let them, they'd all be slaughtered by regular, ordinary Palestinians. So the problem is not Hamas. The war is not a war with Hamas. The war is a war with the Palestinian people. The problem is the Palestinian people. And I don't know that the world is willing, and I don't know that Israel is willing to embrace that. And if you don't, I mean, you might defeat Hamas, but if you don't defeat the Palestinians, you haven't done that much. You've done something. You haven't done that much. Stephen, do you think the underground economy fueled by illegal immigration is a significant fact and surprising strength of U.S. economy? No, partially because I don't think there is a big underground economy. I mean, the United States, even with the illegal immigrants, they tend to pay taxes. They tend to be registered. It's very difficult. And it's not, you see, underground economies succeed where taxes and everything are so high that reporting people, the penalties are really, really high. You see, you go underneath. But in America, nobody much cares if you're legally legal. Once you get a job and you're paid, you can find ways around it. You can cheat. You pay Social Security because it's not that high. You pay your income tax because it's not that high relative to other countries and other places. So there isn't a lot of an underground economy. The legal immigration helps the economy chug along, but it's not that substantial. It's not that great. And there's no underground economy in the sense that there isn't in Greece and Italy and other countries that are really, really heavily regulated and heavily taxed. Gene, thank you. Nunningham, thank you. These are all people who've given stickers without asking a question, supporting the show. You can do that too. 109 watching. We've got 360 to raise. Ed Kalski, thank you. Stephen Harper, thank you. And you can support the show by Jonathan Honing, of course, is right there. And so you can support the show by doing a stick up. Bill Donaldson, thank you, Bill. And so we can get closer to our goal and fulfilling our goal. Somebody asked on the chat, what is the money used for me to live so that I can do this? If you're consuming this, so obviously a value to if you're consuming it, I'm asking for a trade. I'm asking for value for value. If you don't value what I do, why are you here? And then that's just weird. Okay, Andrew says, why do you think it's Catholics who are leading the collectivism of the new right? That's a great question. I think we get Catholics are the intellectuals. I think what you get is the including the pseudo intellectuals. The Protestants are emotionalists. The Protestants go by emotion and they get carried away and they get swept away. They're going to be the populist. They're going to be the supporters of Trump and the rabbit supporters of Trump. They're going to be the people who get excited. They're going to go left or right, depending on who the top of the ticket is and how excited he can get them. Protestants don't tend to be super ideological to the extent that they are even really Protestant evangelical. Catholics are super supposedly rational, right? They're about ideas. They're about principles. They're about consistency and they're about making the world a better place in an organized systematic way. They're much more scholastic than Luther's emotionalism, really. So you get almost all of the intellectuals on the right, particularly on the new right, are Catholic because the intellectuals on the right, I mean the real intellectuals on the right, they care about ideas either therefore they want to promote ideas or they want to destroy ideas. But they understand that it's ideas because that comes from Catholicism. So here Michael Lin wants to destroy, and I don't know if he's a Catholic, but Saul Barmari, wants to destroy the Fronty Fathers because he understands the pernicious, the danger that the Fronty Fathers pose to the project of the new right. So they have to undermine it. They have to destroy it. They have to pull it down. They get that it's ideas that matter. The Protestants don't seem to value ideas that much. Protestantism in America is primarily emotional, primarily driven by emotion. If you look at most intellectual movements, particularly on the right, they are driven by Catholics and Jews, Catholics and Jews. So national conservatism, Jews, Catholics, integrationism is an explicitly Catholic ideology. So it's all Catholics. Saul Barmari's thing, and not only Catholics, but converts to Catholicism. People who weren't Catholic, didn't grow up Catholic, became Catholic, chose Catholicism. And I think they choose Catholicism because of its ideological roots because it is authoritarian in its nature versus Protestantism is whatever, right? A million sects. Catholicism. There's one authority. There's one text. There's one dogma. There's one canon. That's what you follow. And by the way, I'm reading Dominion. I told you I was reading Dominion. Dominion's this book by Holland, which is all about the West, the civilization of roots of Christianity. Christianity is at the root of everything, basically. It's fascinating, fascinating, fascinating. Just in the, he's a great writer, great storyteller, really, really good book, in that sense. It's fascinating. Just the history is fascinating. I love history. So I find the history fascinating. And it's fascinating how wrong it is about ideas, about how ideas shape history, about the path they take about the world of Christianity and history. It's fascinating to me the things that he skips over the things he doesn't talk about, the things he doesn't mention. But I'm going to do a whole show on Dominion. Dominion is definitely worth doing a show about. Because there's a lot of interesting issues there. And the whole idea of how to judge history and how to look at history and how to, how to, how ideas shape history, that whole is really interesting. And it would be good to talk about Dominion maybe even in contrast to a book like The Cave in the Light, which is diametrically opposite in terms of, in terms of what it's trying to teach us and tell us about the West. But anyway, we'll get to that and we'll discuss it. Fascinating because it's also, it's what Ayan Hursi Ali mentioned in her Conversion to Christianity letter. It's what almost everybody is now mentioning as, see, Western civilization is fundamentally Christian. There's no question about it. Look at Dominion. Look at the book at Dominion. That's the book everybody cites. It's very interesting, kind of the trick he is pulling there and how he makes it happen. I don't even think the author is religious. I just think, I mean, he's just doesn't, he's making some real logical, historical thinking errors. And we'll talk about those. All right, we have a bunch of $5, $10 questions. Len, thank you for the sticker. Vanessa, thank you for the sticker. Donna, thank you. Really, really appreciate the support guys. We're about halfway to our goal. But no more $5, $10 questions. So make it now only $20 questions. I said that before and nobody paid attention to me. But I'm just going to say it again, please consider $20 questions. If any of you have them, of course, $100 question, $200 question would be fantastic. It would help us get to the goal that much faster. All right, Hoppe Campbell. In Millay's interview with Tucker Carlson, he said businessmen need a morality to morally defend themselves if we're going to win. Yeah, I mean, look, Millay has studied Ayn Rand. He's read Ayn Rand. He's not an idiot. He's a smart guy. He's an economist. He is, yeah, I mean, he gets Ayn Rand and he's surrounded by, well, not surrounded by, there are a number of people around him who are objectivists who get it, who are not close around him. But in that universe in which, in that universe of kind of libertarians in Argentina, there are a number of objectivists and they've influenced this thinking. And look, he's read Ayn Rand and he's smart. So he's not just read it, but understood it, absorbed it, got it. So, you know, that's why, as I said, I'm excited about it. I don't know if there are any objectivists in a circle. I don't think so. But in the outer circle, they certainly are. All right. Clark says, do you think many nihilists and nihilistic intellectuals motives are to get off on making others hate them? Getting that reaction from people is a high because it sucks their energy. Interesting. I don't know. I don't think so. Well, I mean, I think there's a sense in which I think they get off on the attention. They get off on the other party's anger and other parties falling apart, in a sense. But they're not sophisticated enough to think it through. I think it's more driven by emotion and response and response to emotion and so on. So basically what they want is to see the world fall apart and seeing individuals fall apart on social media, seeing people lose it, seeing people become emotionalists, seeing people grovel or just demolished. That gets them off. There's no question about that. And maybe that's the sucking their energy out of it. Maybe that's a component of that, quite possible. We have 105 people watching. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. It helps with the algorithm. It doesn't cost you anything. If you're not a subscriber, please consider subscribing. It would be great to have you on board and it would be great for you to get announcements on when we have a show. So please consider subscribing to the show. That also helps the algorithm and everything else. And the 109 now, yes. And also consider $3 from everybody right now would get us to our target pretty easily. So please consider doing a sticker or asking a question. Harper Campbell says, have you listened to Netanyahu sit down with Elon Musk? I saw parts of it. I haven't seen the whole thing. I'm not that interested, I have to say. I don't like Netanyahu, as you know. And I don't believe anything he says, particularly in English. And Elon just seemed like on a PR campaign and he was going to say what needed to be said in order to look right and good and just. And one of the parts I saw was when Elon Musk says that he would help build back Gaza. In other words, he was going to put money into building back Gaza. That's kind of a little ridiculous and why and what is incentives and what motivates him. It just seems like he thought that was the right thing from a PR perspective to say. Clark, successfully happy people are always resented and that resentment easily turns to hatred. That's absolutely true. That is what I called hatred of the good for being good. Hatred of happy people being happy. Hatred of successful people for being successful. Hatred of moral people for being moral. So that's absolutely right. Michael, do status policies make everything grimy in cities? In a pure free market, wouldn't everything be clean and modern? There would be no such thing as bad neighborhoods. I think that's probably true. I mean, you know, even today, if you go to, if you go to, for example, the Tokyo, you know, everything's clean. Not everything's modern necessarily, but I don't think they're really bad neighborhoods in Tokyo. Tokyo is also incredibly safe. You could be walking out anytime of night and the chances of violent crime against you are almost zero. That's true if you're a man or a woman. It doesn't matter. It's true of Singapore. Singapore is modern and clean. The neighborhoods that are poorer, but not the kind of slums that you might see in some parts of the United States. Yakuza is overstated and Yakuza is really violent, really violent. And really violent against civilians. They might be violent in terms of fighting among themselves. But look at the statistics. There's very little to no crime in Tokyo. You know, it's an incredibly safe place, unbelievably safe place. Same with Seoul, South Korea. Another fairly clean place. There's some old parts of town, which are a little rundown, but generally it's clean, super clean. Tokyo, Asia generally, particularly, I'd say Japan, Korea, Singapore, are very clean places, very clean places. And I think that would be the norm in a established, you know, a successful rule of law free market. Yeah, Beijing is safe. Shanghai safe. China's generally safe. Asia's generally safe. I mean, but, you know, Beijing, it's hard to tell what the motivation is, but Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, free places generally. But, and yet, incredibly, incredibly safe. I mean, the motor rates, rate rates, violent rates, the lowest in the world. Whereas in the United States, you have some of the highest in the world. James says, thoughts on Jennifer Burns. Is she trying to hood objectivism? Yeah, I mean, I don't think Burns is, I think a problem is she's not a great thinker. She's not radical. She's a conventional thinker. And she is trying to frame Ayn Rand in terms of conventionality. I don't think she's trying to hood objectivism, but she doesn't particularly like Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand is the focus of her research. She's an, quote, expert on Ayn Rand. But she's a conventional expert on Ayn Rand, coming at it from a conventional perspective. She's not embracing, you know, Rand is a radical and Jennifer can't quite, she certainly doesn't agree with Ayn Rand on her radicalism. And she doesn't quite understand the nature of that radicalism. Is she trying to hood objectivism? I doubt it. I think it's just her whole frame of reference. It's just convention. James says, beware people who are in your circle, but not in your corner. True. Why would they be in your circle? Why not kick them out? Why are you staying friendly with people who are not in your corner? These one-liners, they don't really add up, right? The main reason for stress is the daily contact with idiots. I'm not sure that's true. But stress is a positive thing. Stress is attention. Stress is engagement. Stress is the need to do things, the need to act. The daily reason for stress is that reality doesn't just provide for your well-being automatically. That you have to work at it and you have to figure it out. So stress is a natural positive aspect of life. I mean, not too much stress. Liam says, is altruism designed to make people pity evil? No, I think altruism, well, is designed to make people want to sacrifice whatever they have for others. Its nature is not to pity evil, but the fundamental ultimate nature of altruism is the negation of self. The whole design of it is to negate yourself. To disappear as an individual. For your values to be meaningless. For you to be a sacrificial animal, to whatever cause might arise, whether it's God or the nation or whatever. And that's the great heritage of Christianity. The great heritage of Christianity, the great thing that Christianity has left us, and this is true in that sense, dominates our world, is Christianity. Sorry, is altruism, is altruism. That sense of self-sacrifice, suffering, sacrificial lamb for something. But not sacrificial lamb in the sense of literally being sacrificed on the altar, because Christianity rejects that and fights against that. There are much more, in some sense, evil ideology, where it sacrifices your soul on the altar, not just your body, your soul, so that you live a life of suffering. Sometimes it's better to die than to live such a life. Adam says, in view of what happened since worst regulation, loss of EU market, would you still support Brexit? Do you think that EU, with the British outside, remains strong enough to rebuild Ukraine after Russia has beaten? I never supported Brexit. My view of Brexit was, you know, I didn't get a vote on it, but my view of Brexit was, it's good if they do the right things afterwards. Since they didn't do the right things afterwards, it's bad. So it was completely contingent on what the Brits did with it. And I suspected at the time that they wouldn't do the right thing. Is Europe strong enough? So I think the answer is yes. It is to rebuild, to help you rebuild Ukraine. I think it is. I don't think it's that hard to rebuild Ukraine on the basis of investment and trade on for profit without a lot of charity. And I don't think they need the Brits. And the Brits, of course, will participate just as the Brits are providing a lot of the weapon systems to Ukraine right now. So Britain will participate in the rebuilding of Ukraine. So I don't think Brexit is going to have a big impact on Ukraine. I think Brexit primarily impact us on two things. One on England and on the UK itself, just poorer economically, and not doing the things necessary, not taking advantage of the fact that they're not part of the EU at all. And second, the European Union is a loser because the UK was a force for good inside the UK. It was an anti-statist force inside the UK. But unfortunately, Great Britain has kept almost all the regulations from the EU level as not establishing new free trade agreements in any significant way with the rest of the world, as it promised it would, did not make itself a free trade island, did not deregulate, did not cut taxes, and did not establish free trades. What was the point? Liam, Christian altruism is somehow different or worse than Jewish and Islamic altruism. Oh, Christian altruism is worse, is worse for the individual. Jewish altruism is Christian altruism today. There is no Jewish altruism. Jews went out altruistic in the Old Testament, significantly altruistic. What is it? Yeah, there's no love thy neighbor like yourself. There's no turn thou the cheek. There's no love thy enemy. None of that is in Judaism. None of that's in Judaism. There's no idea of self-sacrifice, of suffering as virtue, suffering, you know, for the sake. There is obedience. Follow the law, follow commandments. Follow the authority, particularly the authority of God, the Bible, and so on. So I'm not saying Judaism is good, but Judaism is better than Christianity because it doesn't have Jesus dying for all our sins, the most horrible death possible. And it doesn't have the rationalization, the bizarre weirdness of the Trinity and everything else that all the other ceremonies that Christianity has. It's a lot more, Judaism is just a lot more this worldly. It's a lot more realistic. It's a lot more connected to the real world, right? Islam is not very altruistic either. It doesn't have this notion of sacrifice. On quite the contrary. It has the notion of be strong, be successful, make a lot of money, have a lot of sex, women. It's not very friendly to women, but for men it's very bold and very assertive. It's a warrior's religion. And it's why I think Islam was so successful for such a long time. But it is also like Judaism more than Judaism because it was never reformed and it never got an enlightenment. It's a religion of authority. It's a religion of obedience. It's a religion of laws. Christianity has no laws. One thing I learned from Dominion. Christianity, the laws are written on the human heart. They all derive from altruism and love, dyneba and all of that. There's no code of laws in Christianity. That only comes much later. Islam and Judaism are about code of laws. And so there are much more religions of authority, particularly Islam. It's an authoritarian religion which dictates every aspect of every part of your life. But it's not anti-rich at all. It doesn't venerate the poor. It doesn't venerate poverty and suffering like Christianity does. In many respects Christianity is the worst of the three religions in its fundamental basic ideas, particularly in its ethics. Gale says, do you have an inkling of how many Americans respect the FF, the Founding Fathers? No, no. And look, what does it mean to respect the Founding Fathers? Does it mean, oh yeah, I'm all for them but I don't know a thing about them or don't really... It's hard to believe that anybody in the young generation respects the Founding Fathers. Think of what they're taught in schools only of the evil, particularly of slavery. They're not taught about anything positive about the Founding Fathers. But the tea party used to respect the Founding Fathers but it wasn't very deep. It wasn't very meaningful. So I don't know what depth even those who respect the Founding Fathers have. Twenty percent? Thirty percent? Most? Andy, you ever read H.W. Brands? He just released a history of rivalries between the Founders in my two-read list. No, I haven't. And I've heard about the history of the rivalries between the Founders. But I have not. Harper Campbell, what is the most memorable super chat question you ever received? I can't remember which means none of them are seared in my memory, so none. Roll, you shouldn't be embarrassed by, this is a quote, you shouldn't be embarrassed by your wealth. This contempt for money is just another trick of the rich to keep the poor without it. Michael Corleone. Yeah, I don't know, it might be a trick of the poor to get the rich to give more, to share more of it. I don't think it quite goes in the direction that he asserts. But the Godfather movies were really, really good. Harper Campbell, we are at the point where we have to let them kill us as reparations, Hamas, Black Lives Matter, etc. It certainly seems that way. That's the only thing that they will accept is not you. It's you sacrificing yourself for them. You sacrifice yourself literally for them. Michael says, what will Western society ultimately tolerate regarding Muslim barbarism within their own borders? I don't think much. I really don't. I think Muslims are toast. I mean, look what happened in Ireland. No, it was small. It was just a few hundred people. It was thugs, basically. But Gildvilder's win in the Netherlands, the rise of the SPD in Germany, the rise, I think, of the increased popularity of the right in France. England is the only one that's not going in this direction, it seems. But it definitely seems to be a lack of, what do you call it, patience, patience among Europeans for Islam. And if the Muslims get violent in Europe, that lack of patience could turn into violence against Muslims quite easily, I think. That Dudo Bunny says, why do you think Chris Christie has been so unsuccessful? He seems like the only adult in the room sometimes. Well, because he's the only adult in the room and nobody wants an adult. I think because he's, you know, he doesn't have an agenda. He's not serious. His agenda is attacking Trump with his great agenda and that's great. But the Republican Party doesn't want people to attack Trump. They love Trump. They think Trump was the Messiah in many respects. They have no desire for somebody who is willing to tell them the truth about Trump. No desire at all. I mean, there's very little desire here in my chat to be told the truth about Trump. So I think that's why he doesn't resonate. It's because nobody wants it. Nobody wants to hear it. Nobody cares. Ed Kelski, I agree with you that we have to check immigrants before they come into the country, but don't we need a wall to stop the bad ones from coming in? I thought you were against building the wall. I'm very much against building the wall, you know. But I think if you make immigration legal and you have, I don't know, a dozen checkpoints along the southern border where people can come in legally. They can show that they've had the background check. They can show that they've been tested for diseases or whatever. And you just let them in. I think there'll be very, very few people trying to sneak in. And the people sneaking in, you can shoot. That is, my view is, if you make legal immigration super easy, then the assumption is that the people who are sneaking in are crooks, criminals, terrorists. And then you can be really, really tough on them. You can arrest them. You can send them back. You can do all kinds of things. You don't need a wall for that. All you need is just, particularly you don't need a wall once there are not that many of them. Because most of the immigrants, 90-plus percent of the immigrants who come here are the good guys. There's very, very, very, very few who are terrorists, criminals, infectious diseases, who want to then, and those people you can be tough on. Okay, another one from Ed. I agree with you that you have to, oh, it's the same question. I'm definitely against building a wall. Thomas says, to what extent are movies about historical subjects and people obligated to be at all historically accurate? Does the recentness of a subject or person make any difference? Look, I think that if the person is well-known, and therefore the people are coming into a theater with a context of knowledge about them, then that affects the aesthetic experience and the director and the writers have to take that into account. They have to take into account the context of the audience. And if the audience knows a lot about this character, then they better not deviate from the things that the people know unless the point of the movie is to show, oh, no, no, you thought you knew him, but you don't really. The more distance a person is, the less the people know about him that you can assume know about him, the more liberty you can take with the story. And I don't think as an artist your commitment is to accuracy. Your commitment is to the idea, the commitment is to the story, the commitment is to what it is that you want to tell. You don't have to be historically accurate. But the more recent it is, the more difficult it is to do something aesthetic that has power over people, impact over people, if it's inaccurate because then they'll dwell on the inaccuracy because they'll know it's inaccurate. So it depends on the story, how well-known it is, the character, how well-known that character is, how far in the past it is, and all these things, I think, are relevant. Frank, at Waterloo, a soldier aims his rifle at Napoleon and requests to shoot him. Why does Wellington refuse to have Napoleon shot? He called him vermin. Because these are the rules of war, the rules of chivalry, which the British in particular were very adamant about. This is, you just don't shoot another general. He says something about, oh, well, if we start shooting generals, they'll start shooting generals. You know, that's no good. There's a certain, you know, you fight face to face. They shoot cannons at one another, but not generals. There's just a certain decorum, particularly in the British view of war, which is absurd and ridiculous and immoral at the end of the day. He should have shot Napoleon. But that is the way they fought wars, that they really believed in this. It's like in old Westerns, right? Used to drive me crazy. The good guy would never shoot the bad guy in the back. He would wait until high noon or whatever and have a duel with him where he had a good probability of dying. But the moral thing for the good guy to do is to shoot the bad guy in the back. That is the moral thing, the right thing to do. Why would you put yourself in danger when the bad guy deserves to die and you have an opportunity to kill him? Why give him a chance? Why give him an opportunity to kill you? A code of honor? That's a code of suicide. It's a code of destruction. So I believe in, you shoot him in the back. All right, everybody, have a great night. If anybody wants to pitch in right at the end here, that would be great. But otherwise, I will see you guys tomorrow. I think at 1 p.m. East Coast time we'll do another news roundup. And then on Thursday we'll have two shows. And then Saturday, that'll be Thursday, will be the last shows in November. So then we'll be into December and Friday. Pretty exciting. All right, I will see you all really, really soon. Bye, everybody.