 Alright, Andrew asks, and this will get us into a little bit about the topic of individualism. Andrew says, when conservatives claim that marriage is impractical without duty, why do you think they exclude romantic love? Presumably, some are loving marriages, yet think men would ditch their wives impulsively, absent ethical edicts. Well, so I don't think they're excluding romantic love. I mean, you kind of say it, they think romantic love is conditional on their sense of duty, that they will undermine their romantic love by, without, you know, they would just jump on the woman in the bar, the good-looking woman in the bar, that Ben Shapiro likes to raise, right? They would jump at the opportunity of going and having sex with her and jeopardize their entire marriage, jeopardize their entire relationship for doing that, and the only reason they don't do it is out of some sense of duty. Yom Khazani talked a lot about marriage to work, right, is a process of honoring and honoring in a sense as some form of duty. And of course, honoring your spouse is, of course, an essential part of a healthy marriage. I mean, imagine if you didn't, if you didn't have respect for your wife, if you didn't honor your spouse, then, yeah, I mean, but is it a duty? Or is it a precondition for the love? The reason you love the person is because you respect them, admire them, and therefore honor them. But you see, conservatives have a really hard time with human emotions. Conservatives believe, particularly the Christian version, they believe that we are all born of sin, we're all sinners. This is the whole idea of original sin. We're all open to temptation all the time. We cannot hold on to values, we cannot be consistent, we cannot have integrity. And as a consequence, there's no way we can stay married, because temptation is just everywhere. And the only way to get us to stay married is in a sense to provide some external motivation. You'll go to hell if you get a divorce. That's a good one. Well, you've got to do it because it's your duty and morality is about duty. So conservatives are about, let's stick to tradition, why? Because it's tradition, because it's your duty to do it. And therefore they have a particular view of marriage that is focused and oriented around duty. And yes, they can have loving marriages, but they also know themselves and they know that they are sinful and can be sinful and will be sinful if they had the opportunity and therefore they have to have some external force, call it a duty-bound morality, to keep them in check or God is watching. But it's not just God, it's sometimes just this Kantian view of duty. And this is what makes conservatism and religion and this whole moral tradition so unappealing. I want a rational reason. Why should I stick with my wife? Now I don't think it's that hard to figure out a rational reason, assuming your wife represents a value to you. But they, you know, and Yoram basically said this, they don't really believe reason is applicable to these areas in life. I mean, his view of reason is a Kantian view of reason. His view of reason is that reason is detached from reality. Reason is not a guide to action, certainly not a guide to morality. And so, you know, conservatives, because of original sin, because of their view of morality as a series of duties, a series of commandments, cannot conceive of rational self-interest. They cannot conceive of reason guiding you towards the good. Let's say marriage is good. Can conceive of that marriage actually be guided by rational self-interest. There has to be a duty associated with it. Now the other aspect of this is that some of their marriages suck. Some of their marriages don't have love anymore, are not romantic anymore, are not a significant value to them anymore. And many of them feel a duty to stick with it. Now, I'm not talking about kind of their responsibility to your long-term values to try to work things out and try to make it work and to make sure that it's not, you know, you're not going through a rough patch and this is really a long-term value and so on. I'm talking about a marriage that's clearly not working and people stick with it out of a sense of duty. And that's unbelievably destructive to them and to everybody involved. And that's what conservatism leads to, particularly forms of conservatism, of religion which don't believe in divorce, like conservative Judaism or Catholicism. Scott says, and then I'll get to some more stuff I want to say about individualism and I will say here that this is the last super chat question, so we're way behind in our super chat. 175, our goal is, again, 600, so we're way, way behind and we're really gone for both in an hour. If anybody wants to support the show and show support for the show, this is important that we get to these goals because it's what keeps the show going. It's how, it's what I live off of in a sense, right? It's the payment for the show, so value for value. So I hope some of you will consider supporting the show, uranbookshow.com slash support. But also, right here on the super chat, it has a certain benefit of the immediacy of it and the pleasure of just doing it right now. And I know some of you don't like me asking, but we're way behind right now, so if you like these shows, I'd appreciate you showing the support for them. If somebody came in with two, 300 bucks to get us really to what we need to be, that would be terrific. All right, Scott says, I'm glad you like uran, but he's the intellectual force behind national conservatism. Is it possible they're not as bad as you thought? No, I mean, they're much worse than uran is in many respects because I think uran is the represents a certain version of national conservatism that is not necessarily the dominant one. But uran's version of national conservatism is really, really, really, really, really bad. And you have to be able to separate here between the fact that the individuals might be good people, might be nice people, might be people you like hanging out with, but they have terrible ideas. And I think that if uran's ideas about national conservatism, uran believes that the state should have religion as its mandate, that the United States should be a Christian nation, that Christianity should be taught in schools. uran believes that we should slow down growth in many aspects of technology because it's too disruptive, that we should break up all the big tech companies, that we should use the government to impact culture. I mean, uran probably believes that we should reverse, certainly uran versus Wade, you know, if not him, then the others certainly do, but also gay marriage. You know, the national conservative agenda is horrific for an individualist like me. It's not a little bit bad. It's, you know, about as bad as you can imagine, about as bad as you can imagine. And when you bring in the Catholics who are, yes, whose ideas are worse than uran's, it's a disaster. And of course, in a movement that actually is going to have impact on the United States and Europe, it's the Catholics who are going to have the impact. It's the Catholics of the intellectuals. It's the Catholics who represent Christianity, that is the majority religion. It's the Catholics who are going to dominate. And as a consequence, it's not even close in terms of how bad they are. These ideas are the enemy of everything I believe the founding fathers represented. They're the enemy of liberty, of freedom, of individualism, of everything that I stand for. And they're not, in that sense, better than the left. Now, I think Yoam has a little bit more appreciation for markets, appreciation for individualism. But even he wants to regulate markets, wants to control markets. When he thinks, and it came out in the debate, when he thinks they have gone awry where they don't fit with his vision of where the country should be heading, with his ideals for what America should happen, he is fine with central planners. And he says so, both in the debate and in a debate. Politicians will have to decide when to curb certain industries, when to put on certain tariffs, when to subsidize other industries in the name of the common good, in the name of the national good, which is for him more important than the individual's good. Now, the debate turned out to be mostly about the value of individualism because he doesn't want to say those things. He didn't want to debate his views because it would have got a lot more unpleasant because I would have had to really be critical of his views. And maybe at some point we'll debate his views more directly when it comes to specifics. So one time he mentioned that the United States need to have industrial policy because of all the job losses, because of China, I laid into that. If we'd really discussed all of his views in detail, it would have been a different debate. It was the debate about individualism with the pluses and minuses that involved. But this is, I hope, not the last time we debate. I hope he's open to debating some more and having more discussions so that we can bring out those ideas and so I can illustrate to you guys how bad they really are. If you believe in liberty, if you believe in freedom, if you believe in capitalism, national conservatism is the enemy. Not the only enemy, but it's certainly an enemy of equal statue with some of our other enemies. There is no area of agreement and those of you who are obsessed by the idea that the only enemy is the left and you think that you can cooperate with anybody as long as you beat the left, you or the people will be responsible when fascism comes about in this country, left fascism or right wing fascism, because you will be the people who have sanctioned that those are the only two alternatives. Instead of forming a coalition around the ideas of individualism to stand up to the fascists of the left and the fascists of the right to stand up against collectivism and stand for something. But no, I do not form coalitions around the evil of the left with people who I think politically would bring about disasters that are equal to or close to equal to. I don't care which band of collectivism is worse. Collectivism is evil. Collectivism will kill you. Slow, fast will kill you in one way or kill you in another way. It will kill this country. Now, I happen to think that this country will only accept one form of collectivism, but it doesn't matter whether we die here of communism. I mean, look, I've said this so many times, the only reason a Mussolini or a Hitler could rise up is because people like us bought into the idea that socialism was the enemy and we would fight it together. I mean, that's the whole story of right wing fascism coming about is it always rises up in opposition to communism. It always rises up because the people who are not fascists and are not communists and who fear communism, align themselves with the fascists in order to fight the communists. But guess who wins from that alliance? Guess who benefits from that alliance? Guess who benefits when the good compromises with evil? Only evil. The good doesn't benefit. Yes, you don't need communism. You get an alternative way to die. And we, yeah, but nobody's fight. If you sanction, sanction bad ideas, you are no longer fighting for good ideas. When you sanction bad ideas, you've given up on the good ideas. So yes, we're a tiny minority, but we are a tiny minority that needs to fight all our enemies, all our enemies. And all our enemies are fundamentally the same. They're all collectivists. They're all deep down subjectivists, including the religionists, all subjectivists in the end. Where do they get their truth from, if not from their emotions? So we are individualists. And as individualists, we fight collectivism. We fight collectivists no matter what sheeps closing they wear, no matter what they look like, no matter what they claim to propose. Collectivism is the enemy, always and everywhere. And if you say, no, no, no, I'm going to work with the collectivists who are less bad. Guess what? They're not going to stay less bad. And once they implement their collectivism, you're going to be the first victim of that. So I don't know. I'm obviously, this is a point I've been making for, I don't know, five, six years now, over and over and over again. I'm obviously not communicating if everyone are not being convincing, or you guys are not open to being convinced. I don't know. Something is amiss. Jamie, thank you for the support from Mexico. Really appreciate that. Colin, thank you. Yesterday's show was fantastic. I appreciate that, that value for value. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Bonnie, thank you. Really appreciate that. We are, I don't know, we're still $400 short. So I'm not sure, maybe. Don't cause me to get all depressed by inability to get to our targets. All right, let's see. I want to talk more about individualism. There was one point I wanted to make because of a question yesterday. And I didn't say enough about it, I think. And that is about what is essentially individualism. Is individualism a moral point, or is it individualism a political point? And I think it's important here, it's important to get this right. And by the way, I highly recommend, if you want to understand the issues that we're talking about politically, one of the really cool books that have come out in recent time was Textbook and Americanism, that Jonathan Honing was responsible for editing. And there's a whole section there by Ayn Rand on individualism, but then there's the whole book with lots of intellectuals writing essays that I think about individualism. What is Americanism, if not individualism? Those are synonymous, those are the same thing. And in that, Ayn Rand writes, in Textbook of Americanism, Ayn Rand writes, do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that individualist is a man who says, I'll do as I please at everyone else's expense. An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man, his own and those of others. Note her focus on rights. Rights are a moral political concept. Individualism, I think, is a moral political concept. It's a bridging concept. It defines ultimately where you are politically. It defines your focus, your orientation, what you are going to focus on politically. But by calling it individualism, you are linking it to a particular morality, a morality that recognizes a sanctity of an individual, a morality that recognizes your aim as a pursuit of happiness. Collectivism is the same thing. It is a term that basically orients you towards politics, a particular type of politics. It doesn't tell you socialism, fascism, the particular type of collectivism you're going to be oriented towards. But it presents it as the individualist of serving into the group. Politically, we must place a group above the individual in one form or another. And therefore, in morality, it comes from the idea that your purpose in life as an individual is to sacrifice to the group. The group is more important than you. She can see the integration of politics and morality. And collectivism and individualism are these integrating concepts. Say, West capitalism doesn't orient you towards morality. Americanism doesn't orient you towards morality. Socialism doesn't necessarily orient you towards morality, neither does fascism. Collectivism does. Collectivism says it's immediate that the collectivism is superior. Sorry, that the collective is superior to the individual. And somebody like Yochazzoni is going to say, oh, no, no, I value the individual. Individualism is good. But the state is more important. We need ultimately for the state to determine a path. We need somebody to decide what we're going to do as a collective. And he's a collectivist, in essence, in every sense. So yeah, some are more tolerant of individual freedom than others. But at the end of the day, the authority to determine how much freedom you should have is determined by the leadership, the state, the people responsible. And I think one of the things the National Conservatives want to do is give that leadership a lot of power. Much more power than the founding fathers wanted to give them. So collectivism is the idea that the state is more important, or the collective is more important than the individual. And it indicates a direction in terms of politics. A direction in terms of politics. It doesn't give you the particulars. And individualism, in a sense, says the same thing. Just individualism, there's only one manifestation of individualism. There are many manifestations of collectivism. And the one manifestation of individualism is capitalism. So in my view, individualism and collectivism are the right political spectrum to think about. Collectivism is bad. Individualism is good. You have some political systems that are more collectivist, some political systems that are more individualistic. But that's the spectrum. The extent to which individual rights are protected, the extent to which individual rights are respected. So to quote Ein Rand, the same passage to read it again, did I make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says, I'll do as I please at anyone's else's expense. An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man, his own and those of others. An individualist is a man who says, quote, I will not run anyone's life, nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule, nor be ruled. I will not be master, nor slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone, nor sacrifice anyone to myself. That's Ein Rand out of textbook of Americanism, which is in Jonathan Honing's new book. And that formulation makes clear the foundation in which you build a political system. So it doesn't tell you the specifics about how government should function and the distribution of power and checks and balances and any of that. It doesn't give you the details of the political system. It gives you the foundational principle of the political system to protect individual rights. Well, here's another quote from Ein Rand. This one is from the essay on racism, in the virtue of selfishness. Individualism regards man, every man as an independent sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights and that a group as such has no rights other than the individual rights of its members. That's individualism. That's the foundations on which you build a political system, a political system of individualism in contrast to the political system of collectivism which rejects individual rights and places the individual beneath, if you will, subservient to the group, whatever the group happens to be, whatever the group happens to, the mechanism by which the group happens to make decisions for itself. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching, show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com for less support, by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live and for those of you who are ready subscribers and those of you who are ready supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.