 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Saturday afternoon. It's June already. Hope everybody's having a fantastic weekend and looking forward to it. I guess it's a long weekend. President Biden has given us an extra holiday. So Monday is holiday. So let's might as well take it and enjoy. Although it seems like everybody like I interact with seems to be working on Monday. So a lot of people, I guess federal government is closed, but I'm not sure anybody else is actually closed on Monday. I know I kind of missed a couple of shows that I was supposed to do Thursday and Friday. So again, part of the craziness going on right now. So I'll make it up to you. It's Juneteenth. Yeah, it's a federal holiday. Monday is a federal holiday. So I will make it up to you. I will do a show tomorrow night, 8 p.m. Tomorrow at 8 p.m. we'll have a show and then I'll probably do two shows on Monday, one in the morning and one in the evening and then two on Tuesday. So we'll make it up. We'll make up the shows and one of those shows we'll do is like a catchy go up on the news because I missed a couple of newsy shows that I was supposed to do. All right, today we've got Michael Knowles. So we've got another one of my talks that are going to offend some of you because it'll be a talk about the right and its nuttiness. Tomorrow, just everybody's calm. Don't get too upset. Tomorrow we'll talk about cancer culture. Tomorrow we'll be mostly about the left, not only about the left, mostly about the left. So tomorrow we'll be all about cancer culture in America. So that'll be probably 8 p.m. tomorrow. So yeah, try to balance it all out. Some going after the right, some going after the left. But the reality is I saw this video and I tweeted about it. I tweeted how ridiculous it was. And then people started defending it and it's so ludicrous. And the very attempt of people to defend this video is so ludicrous that it would be a crime not to comment on it because maybe this is the most revealing video you'll ever see on the true nature of the left. This is Michael Knowles. Yeah, he's a bit of a wacko. He's a bit out there. But he's massively followed. The video I'm going to show you has been watched by 5.4 million people. He is on the daily wire. He's one of the big hosts on the daily wire. He is admired on the right. He is extensively followed. And while a lot of people made fun of this video, they were mostly on the left, people kept defending it. Kept defending it. And the more engaged with them, the more they seem to defend it. You can go to Twitter and find the thread where this happens. So I figured, yeah, this deserves a show. I mean, people seem to be very confused. Very confused about history, about values, about culture, about civilization and what civilization actually is. And Western civilization, what Western civilization actually is. So I know many of you who've been here and listened to my show for a long time know my views on Western civilization. But hopefully we'll learn a little bit more today and get a wider context for this in this context. So we'll be talking about the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages. I know you're not supposed to say that. It's not politically correct on the right to call them the Dark Ages. That's a judgment. The right has become so leftist. It can't make judgment. The Dark Ages, as I said, and the Middle Ages. So we'll talk a little bit about that. We'll talk about the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Western civilization, what it is, where it comes from. We'll talk about cultural achievements. And I'm not going to show... We're going to talk a lot about cathedrals. Well, not a lot, but we will talk about cathedrals. I'm not going to show pictures. You can probably find pictures online. It's pretty easy to find pictures of cathedrals. So the great achievement of the 1200s is certainly cathedrals. So you can find them at least the early 12,000. Okay. Let me also remind you that we fund the show from contributions from you. I don't run ads on these shows. I do on the podcast. Sorry, guys, but it provides some income. And yeah, I need to figure out a way to get rid of the platform I use right now. I have to use ads. So if I'm going to run the podcast without ads, I need to get rid. I need to change platforms. Probably happen at some point. And I need more support from you guys. So the two ways in which the show is supported is, one, those of you who don't watch live, typically listen to the podcast or watch the YouTube channel later on, you guys typically support the show on a monthly basis or do a one-time PayPal thing or Patreon or stuff like that. And that is great. And that is fabulous. And that is actually the best way to support the show because that's kind of steady. And I know it's coming and everything. And those of you who watch the show live often engage in asking me questions or just supporting the show using the Super Chat feature on YouTube. And that's fantastic and motivating. And I personally like it. I know some of you don't like it because I keep asking for money and stuff. But I find it very motivating to get the, in a sense, the immediate trade response, right? The value for value, the immediate response. Yeah, we like this. Here's $20. So here's $100. So here's $5, like from Papa Campbell right now or from Michael. So that immediacy gives me the energy to do these shows. They, as you can tell from my passion, I think these require quite a bit of energy. So part of this is I'm feeding off of the chat and I'm feeding off of, certainly feeding off the Super Chat. So please consider doing the Super Chat. Now, let me just mention, importantly, some of you do both. And thank you to all of you who do both. You know, you are the contributors to the show. All right. So please consider doing that. We have a goal of $650 a show for these longer shows. If you can afford it, please ask questions. $20 above those get preference. And those, of course, help us get to the goal much, much faster. So please consider doing that. Maximus is asking what happened on my call with Fox. I guess you're going to have to wait and see. But generally, and I'm going to have to wait and see. But generally, when well, certain people at Fox, it seems, are interested in more Iron Man and more potentially me and more people from the Institute. And so you might be seeing more of me, us on Fox, maybe not on the television, maybe more on fox.com, foxnews.com. But anyway, good things, I think, are going to happen. And we'll see. We'll see, right? Because my experience with Fox is they get all excited. They have me on a bunch of times. And then they go, oh, my God. What did he just say? Oh, my God. You mean that? Oh, can't have that. And then they dump me off. So we'll see a conversation is ongoing. And hopefully, hopefully this will expand our audience. And that'll be one way in which we expand the audience for the YouTube show, for the podcast as well as for everything else. So yes, things are moving forward for all of those of you who claim I'm insular and don't want to cooperate with anybody and don't want to work with anybody and don't want to, I call BS. All right. So let's play the video. I'll play you Michael Knows's video. It's a minute 50. I might play throughout. Just let it run. I might stop it. Who knows? Right? And then we'll talk about it. And again, today we'll be history. We're talking history, culture, civilization, philosophy, ideas, and progress in history. What happens in history? How history evolves? The world, maybe most importantly, the world of ideas in history. So here is, let's see if I can get this. Right? There's Michael Knows. And I'm going to play. Oh, I should put my headphones on so I can hear it. Let me know on the chat if it's too loud, too soft. Any other comments you have, you can use the chat to let me know. All right. Here we go. Americans are as conservative today as they were back in 2012, which is fine. And it's a good start given how much more liberal the country had become since 2012. But if 2012 is the endpoint, then we might as well pack it in, guys. I do not want America to be as socially conservative as it was in 2012. I want our civilization to be as socially conservative as we were in 1220. OK. Forget it. I don't even want the 1950s. I don't even want the 1880s. I want 1220. I think that would be a good spot to land at. At the very least, I think we ought to be as conservative as we were before all the modern ideologies started corroding our civilization. Because that's been the big problem. The reason that a lot of people for a long time became more socially conservative, more open, more tolerant is because they had the pillars of our civilization to rely upon. The church, the family, the productivity, the political order, the institutions, the system of law. We had all of that to rely upon. And so we were just leaning on that while we were indulging in an ideology that was eroding all of that. This is the thing about liberalism, including the old classical liberalism. It's just like an acid that you pour onto your civilization. And I don't know, maybe you like it. Maybe it's like a lysergic acid. Maybe it's like a drug or something. People kind of like this acid for a while, but it just starts to eat away at the thing upon which it must rest. All right. So there is a lot there, a lot there. And we're going to try to break it down. I probably should have stopped it, but I took some notes. There's a lot there, but I want to start with the 2020. Sorry. I want to start with 12. We'll mainly focus on 1220, but I also want to talk about all this modern ideology. Notice that he's dismissing classical liberalism as part of this new modern ideology. So we'll get to what the source of that is. So what's he really about? What's he really about? And a lot of the comments I got on Twitter was, well, he doesn't really mean 2020, 1220. I can't even say 1220, 1220. He just means more conservative in the past, but he repeats 1220 twice. And not only does he repeat it twice, he elaborates on what he's talking about. And maybe he doesn't mean 1220, maybe he means 1009 or maybe he means 1310. But he clearly means Middle Ages culture. He clearly means the social conservatism. And he emphasizes social conservatism. So he's not giving up his iPhone. We'll get to that in a minute. So social conservatism of the 1220. So now Scott already in the chat is defending him. And this is typical, right? Because there's a segment of people who follow me who cannot ever criticize the right, who cannot ever see anything evil. And this is evil, what he says, evil on the right. They find that as an attack somehow on their own values. We saw that in people defending Christianity when I did the Christianity versus Christianian woke and everything else. It's stunning to me, stunning how they cannot even see it. They refuse to see it. And of course, sure this is hyperbole. But hyperbole for what? What is he actually advocating for? He knows exactly what he's doing. I mean, he's dismissing modern ideology. We'll talk about modern ideology means and he's dismissing classical liberalism and he's telling you exactly what he wants people to rely on. What are the pillars of civilization for him? So it's not really hyperbole. This is exactly what Scott says. He's only one man. Yep. And all the people who justify him and the people who employ him and the people who watch him and the people who follow him and the people who cheer him and the people who support him. This is the new right. This is modern conservatism. This guy is huge, popular. One man, it's always only one man. Always only one man. All right. So what was like, what is he pining for? We're talking here about 1220. Basically, he's pining for the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages is a period in which the family was a family. So except once in a while the aristocrat, the Lord, who ruled over these peasants, would maybe want to sleep with your wife on the wedding night before you did. I forget what they called that. But generally, the family was the family, right? There was a man and there was a woman and there was no confusion between them. Woo, God. I mean, the amount of time I know all of you spend every day on dealing with the confusion between men and women, I know, is tiring to you. So it was very relaxing to know that there were men and women. Basically, if you were gay, you kept it serious, you kept it silent, you joined a monastery, or you were like stone to death, right? Or you were killed in some way because that's the penalty in those days for actually being discovered as gay, although somehow the monks in the monastery got away with it without it. There's a fabulous book. There's a lot of rewriting of history going on right now. There's a lot of people trying to defend the Middle Ages, trying to say the Dark Ages were not dark, the Middle Ages were not bad. There's no big difference between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. There's no real shift. They're trying to say that the Middle Ages were just pretty good. People had great lives, and generally the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages have got a bad rap. That is generally modern scholarship. It is driven primarily by religious scholars, but the left joins in because the left doesn't want to be judgmental. After all, in the Middle Ages, people were a lot more environmentally responsible. There were a lot fewer cows polluting with methane. There was no coal. There was no industry. Everything you ate was organic. How can anybody be against the Middle Ages? I guess nobody can on the left. The left and the right have a vested interest in supporting this. There is this scholarship now that keeps coming out about this. I want to recommend a book to you that I think is excellent. It really gives the sense of what the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages and Middle Ages were like. It only spends one chapter on that because then it moves on to what the Renaissance meant and how the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance happened and what that break was, as he calls it in the Book of the Shattering, and what that looks like. I think it's written from a relatively individualistic perspective, a rational perspective. So it's called a... The light here is not very good, but maybe like that. A World Let Only by Fire by William Manchester. It's a really, really good book. One of the best history books you'll read. It's a really, really, I think... You'll learn a lot about history, about what was actually going on and from a really good perspective. But let's think about like back then, and then, you know, I want to read you a couple of short segments that have to do more, I guess, with the intellectual, spiritual side of this period. You know, this is before Thomas Aquinas, before the Renaissance. This is a time feudalism. Most people were serfs. Now, 1220 is a time where things are getting a little bit better. No question. Like the Dark Ages are over. The Dark Ages from about 400 to, I don't know, about a thousand. A really, really bleak. That is the complete destruction of the Roman Empire. It's a fragmentation. You know, Shalaman is like the peak of that period up to the 11th century. And Shalaman was illiterate. Like he was the... and was illiterate. So this is a slight improvement over that. There's some universities. Oxford, University of Paris. There's a little bit at the beginnings of the discovery of Aristotle. So there's some questioning. Not too much because this is still a period in which if you question, you're killed. And, you know, if you question and act on it, a lot of purification is being done of the church, a lot of people who... And it's interesting because most of the people being killed during this period, we've already got all the pagans who have become Christian. But now people who take Christianity a little too seriously like have vows of poverty and things like that as communities and say that the church and the pope are corrupt, they're basically slaughtered. They're butchered, right? So this is a period of immense violence. Violence on a local scale and violence on a kind of... not an international scale because it was the international, but on a... Well, an international scale because this is a period of the Crusades. This is a period where the Crusades often fail. So in 20-something, 2012, 12-something, the Crusades try to go to Jerusalem. They fail. So on their way back, they figure they're pissed off. They're not happy. They've just failed. So they go to Constantinople, which is basically Christian at this point, and they sack the place and slaughter everybody. And they're basically slaughtering Christians, right? No problem in killing left and right and everybody and everybody else. So it's an unbelievable period of violence. So to the extent that you consider, you know, socially conservative equals violence, then you got it. This is a period of immense violence and if social conservatives considered that as something good, then so be it. It is a period in which the Crusades, in order to fund the Crusades, in order to just warm up, slaughter people on the way to Palestine and steal their stuff so that they could fund... They're going over and trying to capture Jerusalem from the Arabs and from the Muslims. But again, you know, slaughtering is going on on a white scale, particularly if you are considered some kind of apostate to Christianity. Indeed, in the Dark Ages, you know, people talk about Islam having converted much of what today is the Arab world by the threat of the sword. I said Christianity didn't do that. I mean, the Christians traveled all over Europe and converted people with the sword. You either converted Christianity or you don't. Charlemagne did this, I think to the Saxons. He basically said you either convert to Christianity right now, you're baptized, or we kill you. And they said, eh, we don't want to convert. And he killed 45, he literally cut off the heads. He decapitated 4,500 people in one day. I don't know how you even do that. I don't know what the logistics of that are of killing that many people in one day by beheading. I mean, beheading is not easy. So anyway, maybe that's exaggeration. Maybe it took them three days. But the point is they killed 4,500 people in one day. Why? Because they wouldn't convert to Christianity. So don't tell me Islam is this brutal religion where they converted everybody with the sword. Christianity of that period was exactly the same. This is a period in which people are poor. Most people are still subsistent farmers. Usually to farms that are owned, owned in quotation marks because it's not real ownership by lords, by aristocrats, and who most people are serfs. They are now towns. The towns might have craftsmen. It's interesting that if you read now, I looked at the Britannica history of this period. And if you read the Britannica history, it's like this is an era of growing economy, of increased wealth, of industry. And you go, really? Industry in the 19th century sense, because we're reading this in 20... What is it now? 2023. So industry has a certain ring to it. No, of course not. It's little craft shops. It's little one-two-man operations. This is not industry. And rising standard of living, rising productivity, not in the sense of the 19th century or the 20th century. This is from 12, you know, over a thousand years, barely any increase in real wealth, in real production, in real increased standard of living. And think about how low things got in the Dark Ages so that the Middle Ages looks like a big improvement. This is an era of physical material, you know, horror. But it is also a period in which it is also a period where spiritually, there's really no art. Most people aren't exposed to any art. The art that exists is purposefully ugly, gargoyles, monstrous, and Jesus is on a cross. But even the Jesus, there's no anatomically correct Jesus. There's no anatomy. There's just the symbolism of what Jesus would be on a cross, of suffering, of hatred, of pain. That's what this period conveys. This is a period of darkness, of suffering, and of horror. People are unbelievably superstitious. Faith dominates all discussions. Christianity is the law, although there's the beginning of the study of Roman law in some of these centers and even the beginning of analysis of Aristotle in places like the University of Paris. But these are the exceptions. This is a few people. It's still true that the vast majority, vast majority of people are illiterate. They can't read. They will never be able to read throughout their lives. This is by the standards of 2023. This is like one of the worst periods in human history. The Romans were better off. The Greeks were better off. Within 300 years, Europeans are better off with the Renaissance. The Arabs are better off. The Arabs are better off from 900 to 1200 AD. They're better off. The Chinese are better off. A lot of their history, they're better off. This is not a good period. As I said, there's almost no art. There's some poetry. There's some poetry going on. A little bit after 1220, and I wonder if Noel's just made up 1220 of he was targeting the same. I don't know. But a little bit after this is Thomas Aquinas. So you get the beginnings of thought, philosophy. But during this period, there's zero. There's one philosopher during this period. I mean, this is 100 years earlier, but basically similar. Bernard of Clauvoir. The most influential Christian of his time bore deep distrust of the intellect and declared that the pursuit of knowledge and less sanctified by a holy mission was a pagan act and therefore vile. Vile. The pursuit of knowledge was vile. And you know, this is the beauty of the book by Manchester. Whoops, the light here was terrible. William Manchester, you know, I really encourage you to read it. Here's another element of this that has to do with arts, personal values, kind of personal responsibility, inspiration, conservative, conservative, social conservative, socially of society. This is interesting. The most baffling, elusive, and yet in many ways I'm reading for the book, and in many ways the most significant dimension of the medieval mind were invisible and silent. One was the medieval man's total lack of ego. Now, I think this is what Noah was and maybe you met Walsh really, really like. Although, of course, they have big egos, but other than that, the total lack of ego, even those with creative powers had no sense of self. Each of the great soaring medieval cathedrals, our most treasured legacy from that age, required three or four centuries, three or four centuries to complete. Canterbury was 23 generations in the making, 23. Chartres, a former Druic center, 18 generations. Yet, maybe not yet, maybe because we know nothing of the architects or builders. They were glorifying God. To them, their identity in this life was irrelevant. Noblemen had surnames, but fewer than one percent of the souls in Christendom were quote, well-born. Typically, the rest, nearly 60 million Europeans, were known as Hans, Jacques, Saul, Carlos, Will, or Will's wife, or Will's son, or Will's daughter. If that was inadequate or confusing, a nickname would do. Because most peasants lived and died without leaving their birthplace, there was seldom need for any tag beyond one eye or rosy the redhead, or blondie, or the like. These villages were frequently in nominate for the same reason. If war took a man even a short distance from a nameless hamlet, the chances of his return to it were slight. He could not identify it, and finding his way back home was virtually impossible. Each hamlet was inbred, isolated, unaware of the world beyond the most familiar local landscapes, a creek, or mill, or tall trees scattered by lightning, scarred by lightning. There were no newspapers or magazines that formed the common people of great events. Occasional pamphlets might reach them, but they were usually theological, and like the Bible, they were always published in Latin, a language they no longer understood, even if they could read it. Between 1378 and 1417, this is a hundred years later than Noel's ideal, Pope Clement VII and Benedict XIII reigned in Avignon, excommunicating the other popes from Rome, who excommunicated them right back, yet the toiling peasantry was unaware of the entrainment of the church. Who would have told them? The village priest knew nothing himself. His archbishop had every reason to keep it quiet. The folks were baptized, shriven, attended mass, received the host at a communion, married, and received the last rites, never dreaming that they should be informed about great events, let alone have any voice in them. The anonymity approached the absolute, so did the mute acceptance of that. That's what they want. No Twitter. No, none of this. And of course, a life expectancy of 29, half your kids dying before the age of 10. No technology, no wealth. Now, some people said, wrote to me and said, wait, wait, wait a minute. Michael knows he's talking about social conservatism. He still wants the wealth, but this is where this is worse than a fantasy. This is a massive evasion. Where does the wealth come from? What led to the wealth that we have today? What led to the non anonymity of individuals today? What led to Twitter and iPhones and everything we have today? What led to the modern standard of living that they want to preserve while having the barbaric culture of 1220? Oh, by the way, I didn't even mention that I should have 1220, and this I think is what really appeals to Norse and Mad Walsh. Women could not own property. Women were basically slaves to their husbands. They won nothing. They had no rights. I mean, men didn't have rights, but women certainly didn't have rights. They were below. So what led to all the wealth that we had today, all the success that we had today? What meant to it is modern ideology. And this is what Norse is complaining about. Well, led to it because he says, what I want is social conservatism before all modern ideology. Well, what is modern ideology? You say the individual mind, the individual ambition, but what made individual ambition possible? What made the individual mind fertile, efficacious in the world? Where did it come from? How did it happen? Just fluke? It's just an accident that, you know, if we don't keep the social conservatism of 12, 12, 20, whatever the hell that even means. Yeah, we'd still be wealthy today. I mean, that is such ignorance of history. The Middle Ages ends with a revolution. An intellectual revolution. Evolution of the mind. A revolution of the individual. It takes that revolution a few more centuries to actually manifest fully in the culture, which then leads to increased wealth. But it happens, you know, 200 years after 1220. It happens sometime in the 1400s. Exact dates don't really mean much here. And that's called the Renaissance. And what is the Renaissance? The Renaissance is a Renaissance. It's a rediscovery and a re-introduction and a reliving of what? Of Greece and Rome. Of Aristotle. Of beautiful sculptures of individuals. And now, now you have great art. Now you have great art that's not, you have art that's available to all people. Michelangelo's David is out in public. Everybody can enjoy him in Florence. You have art that's displayed everywhere. And you have a beginning of a recognition of individuals. Still, most people are serfs. Still most people ignorant. Still most people are illiterate. But it's the beginning. And yes, certain things happen in the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas predominantly. That led to the Renaissance. So it's not that Renaissance came out of nowhere. Of course not. It's those first studying Aristotle in the University of Paris by people like Abelard. Abelard's a great story, like of Middle Ages. I don't know if you know that. If you don't know the story of Abelard and Eloise, you should know it. And there's a good movie about it, which I forget the name of. But Abelard has this affair with Eloise. And as a consequence, as a sexual relationship with it, and as a consequence is, well, I won't tell you what happens. Watch the movie or read up about it. And then, you know, so you get a renaissance. And a renaissance is the introduction, the beginning of the introduction of modern ideas. Modern ideas about art. Modern ideas about the individual. Modern ideas about the secular. About the secular. Maybe even modern ideas about sexuality. I know. Rough. But it's probably the case. I don't know for certain. But it's probably the case that both Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were gay. Michelangelo probably repressing that and suffering from guilt and everything else. And Leonardo embracing it and living it, not quite in open, but relatively in open. I mean, Michel knows we'll be horrified by that. This is modern ideology. It's really fascinating to me how of all the issues out there, sexuality and homosexuality is the thing they fear the most. They're really afraid of it. They're really scared. I don't know what it says about their own sexuality or what it says about their own sense of their own manliness. But they're terrified. Terrified of homosexuality and terrified. Gay pride now. Pride flags are the most terrifying things in America today. That is the enemy because they are so afraid. These right-wing nuts are so afraid of that. So it's the renaissance where humanism starts entering the picture. Where Greek ideas are being discussed. Where Greek art is being manifest. Yes, first in the presentation of Christian ideals, but in a very secular form. Jesus is now on the cross. One day I'll do a lecture, maybe we'll see. One day I'll do a lecture on how Jesus is presenting on the cross through history and what that means and what that means about the different periods and the different eras. But Jesus now on a cross is an individual with features, muscles, expression. He is a real being. He's not the abstraction he was in the Middle Ages. He has a reality. Just look at the Pietà by Michelangelo. He's not on the cross. He's on Mary's knees. But he's a real human being. Somebody you can relate to. Somebody you can associate with. Now we're starting to get individualism. And we're starting to get a certain respect for the intellect. Thomas Aquinas brings that into the church. Reason into the church. Now starting to think. Reason. Rationality. And that's of course maybe manifest itself brilliantly, ultimately in the Enlightenment. Where it then has a political manifestation. The founding of America. But can the founding of America happen without a renaissance? No. Can John Locke happen without a renaissance? No. The founding fathers don't exist without a renaissance. And the renaissance is the beginning of the rejection of the ideas, the social conservative ideas of 1220. What are the modern ideology that he is rejecting? Women's suffrage? Probably. Anti-slavery? Maybe. I don't know. He says he's throwing in classical liberalism as part of the enemy here. Yeah. What's classical liberalism? Individualism and reason. That's what he rejects. That's what he doesn't want. He doesn't want thinking. What are the pillars? The pillars are church, family, political order. Oh my God. Political order. Don't they love political order? They just can't wait for the next authoritarian to come and impose political order on us. They love hierarchies. They want that lobster, the lobster, the political order lobster to rise to the top and dominate. Church, family, political order. He throws in productivity. I find that interesting. He knows he needs an economy. But how much productivity was there in 1220? How much productivity would there have been if not for renaissance and enlightenment? How much liberty, how much freedom they claim to love America? How much liberty? How much would there be in America? Would there be in America without the renaissance and the enlightenment? And yet this is exactly what he's rejecting. I mean, Michael Knowles is anti-American, fundamentally anti-American. His whole ideology is the rejection of America and anybody, any of these conservatives who reject the enlightenment are rejecting America. The enlightenment, America is the enlightenment. It is the political manifestation of the enlightenment. It is the culmination of the enlightenment. It is the flowering of the enlightenment. There is no America without the enlightenment. I mean, the founding fathers were enlightenment men. And indeed many of them were renaissance men in a sense that they knew and did a lot of different things. Yes, they were marginally religious. But that is not what makes them unique. You couldn't find a group like the founding fathers in 1220. You could have taken the smartest people in the world in the 1220. They wouldn't have been the founding fathers. No way. What parts does he want from 1220? Name the parts that he wants. I know what parts he wants. He wants the subjugation of women. He wants hierarchy. He wants political order. And he wants more than anything else, faith to dominate. He wants religion to dominate. He wants religion to tell you how to live, what to live, who to sleep with, who to have sex with, and what kind of life to live. That's what he wants. That's what these people want. This is the essence of barbarism. This is the essence of primitivism. This is not the conservative, not even the William F. Buckley conservatives. This new conservatives are anti-intellectual, anti-ideology. They are the worst enemies because they present themselves as wrapping themselves with the American flag when at the same time they're ripping it to shreds. They're denying the very intellectual foundations that it requires in order to exist. They want to be able to impose their will on the people. They want force. They want coercion. And they want to see witches burn and gays being stoned. That's what they want, at least that. That is what their ideology requires. That's nose and that's wash and that's the whole rest of the new right. These are not our allies. These are not our friends. These are not common allies in a mutual, you know, attacking a mutual enemy. Sadly for us, we must fight a multi-front war. But to lie yourself with scum like this, really? I mean, just play out the implications. Now, by the way, you know, he doesn't hide this. Let me play you. I was going to do this necessarily. Let me play you. This is a little segment from Knowles. Let's see if I can... So this is a pride thing, right? So let me play you this. I'll have to wear my headphones. All right, here we go. What are felt coerced to participate in the Pride event and was offended by some of the messages? Like this quote from Tennessee Williams. Human heart cannot... This is the quote from Tennessee Williams. I'm going to stop here because I want you to read it. What is straight? A line can be straight or a street. But the human heart, oh no, it's curved like a road through the mountains. This is Tennessee Williams. I mean, Knowles really finds this offensive. Straight, curved. How come this girl, that is offensive to this girl and why doesn't her mother set her straight? Yeah, that flag is offensive to all normal people. It is a symbol of pride, the deadliest of the seven deadly sins. I mean, we'll do a show on the seven deadly sins, right? But the problem he has with the flag is that it's a symbol of pride. Pride month. Pride is the worst of all the deadly sins. Remember that. Remember that when you want to be friends and allied and political allies, pride, which to Aristotle is the queen of all virtues, pride, which to Ein Rand is the virtue that integrates the culmination of a virtuous life, pride to him is the most evil, most sinful. So the pride flag should be banned from all public spaces. The flag, the symbol. Tell with free speech. There's no free speech in America. Not if Michael Knowles has anything to say about it. You're worried about woke. You're worried about free speech from the left. You should be. You should be. But these guys, these guys are better. It doesn't matter. He's not talking about false pride. He's talking about pride. And he wants to ban the flag from America free speech again. Because it's evil and degenerate. So he's going to ban everything that he thinks is evil and degenerate, that the church thinks is evil and degenerate. He's going to ban it. It signifies an ideology that is contrary to truth, goodness, beauty, and reality. Yeah, 1220 actually signifies an ideology that is the opposite of truth, beauty, dignity, and reality. Anybody who holds a 1220 as the model is a standard for goodness, for society, for culture, for civilization. And it is an indictment of our political order that the warmed-over hippies and other deviants running our schools need to learn that lesson from 11-year-olds. That is very sad. She says her daughter felt coerced. She says her daughter... Stop this. Close that window. All right. So, yeah, these are the authoritarians. The authoritarians are the ones who would like to destroy our free speech, try to impose their morality, try to impose on all of us what we can and cannot say, what we can and cannot do based on their 1220 morality, but based on their morality of the middle ages. That is the standard of beauty, the standard of good. I want to say one last thing. One of the people said, oh, 1220, I got a lot of these comments. 1220 was an era of beautiful buildings. They built these amazing cathedrals. Now, you know, I read you the segment about cathedrals taking 20 generations to build. What did those 20 generations have to go through in order to build those cathedrals? Those cathedrals were not built by developers seeking a profit motive. They were built by the church, by the authorities. They were built by stealing money from people who had none, taking the meager earnings of peasants. And if they couldn't take their money, they enlisted them in working in these places. Now, many of them were basically slaves to leg around these rocks and slowly build these horrific temples to God, purposefully tall, purposefully big in order to make you, you, small, little. They were impressive. People could build this. But then you think about who these people were and what motivated them to do that now. It's true, some of them volunteered because they believed, because their preachers told them that if they volunteered, they would go to heaven, call that fraud, work under false pretenses. They were lied to. The evil. And I thought this the same thing when I walked through the Vatican. The evil of, you know, this is just like the pyramids. The evil of taking people's money, taking people's lives, and how many people died in that work and the queries to cut up those stones and carrying them and bringing them to build these cathedrals. The churches didn't care about those individual lives. They didn't care one aorta. Twenty generations. We'll build this. We'll make it. Why? Is there something that adds to human life? No. Something that is enshrines the mysticism. Something that enshrines the littleness of man, the smallness of man, the insignificance of man. That's what these cathedrals are meant for. They're for the glory of God, not you. When I walk into them, it's like, wow, but horrible. I don't consider these great achievement of Western civilization. There was no, there was no civilization in 1220. There was no Western civilization until the Renaissance. I consider these monstrosities just like the pyramids. I mean, all inspiring monstrosities. But monstrosity is nevertheless built to the glory of a mythology. Built through the hard labor of basically slaves and people being lied to. Built in order to make you and me look and feel small, insignificant, dominant, you know, and allow the authorities to dominate us. Cathedrals don't need to be torn down, but they should be remembered for what they are. A testament to an evil ideology. A testament to a horrific period of time in human history. A testament from which we should learn the value of modernity. So there was a lot of bad in modernity, no question. But not to be able to see what is good and what is bad. Not to be able to separate them out. Not to be able to distinguish the subjectivist, run amok, nonsense of the left. To lump everything that came out of the Enlightenment as that, as woke. And therefore, let's trash it. Whatever the hell woke is. I don't even think knows could actually define it. To destroy everything that has been created since the Renaissance. Because you don't like what the left happens to be doing today. Actually, he doesn't like what the left has been doing since the 1890s. 1880s, I think he mentions. That wasn't good enough for him. Yeah, people are too individualistic, too self-interested, too capitalist, too free, too productive, too thought, reasoned. Yes, there's a lot to criticize about modern society. A lot to criticize about modern culture. A lot to criticize about modernity. But on balance, I'll take 2023 over 12, 20, any day. I take living in 2023 over pretty much any other time. I mean, there are a few peers in human history that were fascinating in the Enlightenment, Greece. But in terms of the freedom and the wealth and what is available to you today. Wow! And if you're a woman, Enlightenment wasn't that great for you and Greece wasn't that great for you. If you're gay, the Enlightenment wasn't that great for you. Greece wasn't that great for you. When is a better time? So yes, a lot to fight. A lot to correct. A lot to fix. A lot of bad stuff happening out there. And hey, maybe there's a dark ages still in front of us that we need to prevent. But the solution is not these people. The solution is not Michael Knowles. The solution is not Mike Walsh. The solution is not Jordan Peterson. The solution is not people on the right. And certainly the solution is not people on the left. A new path is needed. Maybe a path built on the Enlightenment. Built on the good ideas of the Enlightenment. While rejecting the bad ideas. Built on the good ideas of modernity. While rejecting the bad ideas. Built on the principles that I think underlie the Enlightenment and Western civilization. Individualism and reason. That's how you build a civilized world. That's how you build a civilization. The new right just wants to drag us down into the pit of hell, which I think 1220 represented well. All right, that is my spiel for today. I will take some of your questions. Still about $200 short. So we have plenty of time. There are a lot of questions. So plenty of time for us to catch up. Strong preference for $20 questions. Just because there are a lot of questions. We've got probably well over half an hour worth of questions here. So let's take a look. Oh, a Hopper Campbell has $100. Thank you Hopper. $100 question. And he says we're not. Let me just thank a few people. So Wes I think gave $50. Wes, thank you. Really appreciate $50. Catherine, thank you. These are people who gave stickers without asking a question. This is what I'm thanking separately. William, thank you. And they probably used some others. So I apologize, but I can't see it all. All right, so Hopper Campbell says we're not sliding into a Christian authoritarian state, aren't we? There's too much reason in science circulating. Hope so. The likelihood is we wobble along in a secular leftist days for a generation until libertarianism becomes mainstream and after that, objectivism becomes mainstream. I doubt that is how it happens. I doubt that is how it happens. I think the fact is that this leftist stuff is very unpopular. If you look at demographic trends, election trends, there's only one issue where the country seems to be moving more to the left, interestingly enough. And that is an abortion. The only topic that I see out there that is trending left is abortion. And every other topic, things are trending to the right. The whole trans issue, people are much more skeptical of trans than they were 10 years ago. Gay issue, people are more skeptical now about gays than they were five, six years ago. On pretty much every, you know, people who consider themselves conservatives, numbers are going up. On pretty much every issue, the trend is rightward leaning in spite of the fact that the left dominates the institutions, the media, the universities, the schools. Actual poll numbers show that DEI, ESG, yes, because it's imposed from the top, are huge. But the popularity of things like DEI and ESG are sinking. And by the way, if the Supreme Court overturns affirmative action, which I think it's likely to do in the Harvard case, then DEI is going to have a really difficult time groaning itself, establishing itself. There will be a real backlash against it. So, I mean, yes, the left is ripping society apart and it keeps raising issues that are just ripping people apart and you know, the consequence are cities like San Francisco. And now nobody wants to move to San Francisco. Even graduates of Stanford left leaning when asked how many of you are thinking of moving to San Francisco just a few miles to the north, they think it's a joke. Because this leftist mentality is so self-destructive and it happens very quickly. I think there's a backlash and there's a backlash brewing and it's going to intensify and it's going to get greater, you know, Black Lives Matter, huge backlash against that. And if it resurrects itself again, there'll be an even bigger backlash which will raise the specter of white racism as opposed to the racism from blacks, which I think, unfortunately, Black Lives Matter signified. There is no, in my mind, you know, it is interesting that in certain issues the left has won. And I think the left has won on economic issues. There's just no opposition to it anymore. But on social issues there's real opposition. We've just overturned world versus weight. You know, I don't know, a third of the country or maybe half, I don't know, bans abortion. And state after state after state now is reversing trend on trans and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a real challenge to gay marriage down the road. On the cultural issues, the country is going to move to the right. And most of that is bad. Most of that is bad. And on economic issues, the left has won. There's no opposition, no opposition to on the economic issues. I know DeSantis just signed a bill, I think yesterday, that restricts direct sale of automobiles. You have to go through an authorized dealership. For new cars. You have to go through authorized dealerships so companies can't sell you direct. You can't call a Ford and buy a car from Ford. You have to go through the Ford dealership in your local community, in your state. Signed a bill, basically, that has to be the case except for Tesla. Tesla can sell direct. Talk about cronyism. Why can't all companies sell direct and then have dealerships for people who want to have a dealership? Can we have a free market in automobile sales? This is DeSantis. Nobody today believes in a free market. They're all cronyists of different forms, of different types. Shrink government, not Republicans. Not where it counts. Not when it matters. So no, we've lost the economics and the culture, I think is ultimately going to, over time, move more to the right. Because I think people are just disgusted by the left, as they should be. As they should be. And then I don't think you get libertarianism, not as an ism. Ultimately you get more free markets and you get more and more freedom, but I wouldn't call it libertarianism. You just get more and more freedom ultimately when we start winning and then ultimately get objectivism. But it's not going to be an ism that dominates the culture and then you get objectivism. That's not the path, because libertarians are not the path to objectivism. Libertarianism is opposed to objectivism. Certainly as an ism. What you'll get is more and more free markets, a better and better free culture. A free culture. Not a right wing culture, which is an unfree culture. A free culture. Alright, let's look at some. We've got a couple of $50 questions. $250 short of the goal for today. Let's make it only $20 questions now because God, I have a lot of questions today. Let's make it only $20 questions and it would be great if we could get to to our goal. Okay, Clark. I tend to be more sympathetic to conservatives than leftists. Having grown up around a bunch of smug, obnoxious leftists, I always regard conservatives as slightly more serious and more reality-oriented, but possibly more destructive. I mean, generally in the past I would have thought, yeah, that's about right. But if you look at Michael Knowles and if you look at Matt Walsh, are they more serious? And are they more reality-oriented? I certainly don't think so. I certainly don't think so. And look, I have a very negative view of religion. I do. We could debate that. And I also have this view of religion, which not to insult anybody out there, but the reality is this is my view. That religion is not a difficult one. I became an atheist at age, I think 6, 6 or 7. I know the proximity because it was while I was living in London as a boy. And it's like if I could do it at age 6 and I'm not a genius, what's holding you guys back? What's preventing everybody else from getting it? This is mythology. This is pretend. These are stories. None of this makes sense. This doesn't take genius to figure that out. So I have a very low opinion of religion because it's kind of silly. And as a consequence I have a really, really hard time taking seriously. People who take religion very seriously. I understand people who are kind of religious, want to believe there's a God out there, or just moderately so. But to be able to take this seriously, you think, faith is it? Christianity is it? I don't know. Again, the nobles and mad waltzes of the world. I just can't, I can't take them seriously. You know, there's a certain intellectuality to certain conservatives who believe generally that you need religion to keep order in the world. They're not very religious themselves, but other people need to be because otherwise we'll have chaos and whatever. Kind of this attitude that I think a lot of, or even a David French who takes his religion very seriously, but on most issues he's trying to use reason to convey his ideas. I find David French of the world strange and bizarre because he's really smart. How can he still be this religious? But at least he's trying on the issues that he's debating to use reason. So I can't take the conservatives, I don't take the left seriously and I can't take the conservatives seriously. There are pieces of the left that are serious. I'd say the secular rational left and then there's people of a secular, rational right or semi-secular secular rational right emphasis on rational right rather than you know, but that's not a lot of people. But those are the people that I can take seriously. You know, Steven Pinker on the one side and Jonah Goldberg on the other side. That's the space in which I take people seriously. Matt Welsh you know, I still think Ben Shapiro is better than this but I'm probably wrong about that. He's probably not better than this. But I still think Ben Shapiro is better than this. John Peterson, I used to think was better, tanked completely. I just... Who am I supposed to take seriously? Very, very narrow spectrum of people that I take seriously. Alright, whoa! James came in with $150 to get us over the target. Thank you, James. James says, I sent a PayPal payment for Texas. Did you see it? I'm curious how you see something unfolding in the U.S. What happened when baby boomers retire? How do you see small business evolving because of this situation? What are profitable industries with people... profitable industries where people are retiring? I'm not sure I understand that part. Okay, so I did get the Texas question. I apologize I haven't done it. As I said, I've been several times now in the last few days. I've been distracted. A number of you have sent questions in PayPal. I owe you answers to those. Texas being a big one because you put a lot of money into that. I will get back to you on that in the next few days. This is high on my priority to do. I should have done it today. I apologize. So maybe tomorrow's show. Maybe I'll do that plus cancer culture or else on Monday or maybe I'll move cancer culture to Monday or do Texas tomorrow. But in the next two days I hope to do Texas and to answer also questions that other people have asked me. I've sent money and I will answer those. Alright, so that's that. But what you're asking now, thank you for the $150, very, very generous, is how I see U.S. unfolding. What happens when the baby boomers retire? Well, the babies have retired. Most of them have. I'm like at the very end of the baby boomer generation and I'll be retirement age, Medicare age if you will, in three years. So I think most, a vast majority of the baby boomers have already retired. And what is going to happen and what is happening is a number of things and you're seeing that in the economic numbers. One is you've got a real labor shortage. The baby boomers were a huge generation. They are exiting the workforce. You've got generations that are significantly smaller and behind them and you've got in America today, you're seeing it. You've got a real labor shortage. You've got a talent shortage, just to share labor shortage. And the only way to make up for that is through immigration and indeed America's is in a kind of stupid haphazard not serious way is bringing in a lot of immigrants until large extent they have to because we've got a massive labor shortage. We've got millions and millions of jobs that are short and as immigrants come in, they'll create a bigger labor shortage in the short run because many of them will be entrepreneurs and they'll start businesses and they'll look for other people. So the first thing is a labor shortage. So we're going to be less productive than we could otherwise be. Second, you have a massive you know budgetary shortfall as baby boomers retire and they go on Medicare and so security but Medicare is even more so than so security for every dollar a baby boomer paid in taxes for Medicare they will consume for at least let me say that again for every dollar a baby boomer paid in taxes into Medicare he will consume for. I mean Medicare is one of the best deals anybody's ever had. Medicare pays all your medical expenses it is socialized medicine for old people it covers you it provides for healthcare to prevent you from dying it keeps you alive for kind of as long as you want so end of life care which is super expensive but you will consume over four dollars and it might be much more than four because the reality is baby boomers are also going to live long many of them are going to live very long the decline in life expectancy in the United States is not in the baby rooms the decline of life expectancy in the United States is middle-aged young and middle-aged people killing themselves one way or the other either through either through drug addiction or through alcoholism or just through suicide but that's young people relatively speaking old people are going to live very old and therefore they're going to require lots of healthcare and they're going to suck up all their money so where's the money coming from who pays for the other three dollars that Medicare consumers are using well the other three dollars are going to go are going to come from young people so taxes are going to have to come up significantly taxes are going to have to come up government spending on other things are going to have to go down how the United States maintain its military superiority in the world is hard to completely comprehend given just the sheer numbers so security is bankrupt so that will have to be dramatically reformed they will impose rationing and therefore the tail end of the baby boomer is like me might not get as good of a healthcare and as long as I have money I'll buy supplemental private insurance and I'll survive but people who are poor who can't buy the supplemental will just be allowed to die much younger and won't get high quality care just like they do for many people in Europe so I think generally huge amount of debt debt will grow dramatically labor shortage decline in productivity stagnation in productivity, circulation and again growth and just basically going nowhere just basically going nowhere and I see that for the U.S. economy unfortunately going into the next few decades we are profitable industries where people so James is saying I asked industries are profitable from your view point because I work in acquisition consulting I'm curious how you objectively see different sectors look I think there's going to be a lot of industries that are going to be profitable I don't think there's going to be a lot of economic growth but that doesn't mean that within the universe of economic activity there won't be profits to be made certainly healthcare over the next 30 years can be a profitable business but if you want to navigate the regulatory minefields somebody is going to have to provide healthcare to all these retiring baby wounds and you know there is a lot of money to be made there whether in drugs or whether in treatments or whether in in medical devices the healthcare market is going to continue to boom now at some point the government won't be able to afford to pay it all out but there's a lot of money to be made between now and then and even then you know baby wounds will have to we'll just have to dip into their own pockets and start paying but they will because it's their health it's their life so I think that's certainly one area the second area is technologies and I think the two dominant technology oh by the way and I'll include in the healthcare anything related to biotech I mean there's a massive revolution happening in biotech it's truly exciting a lot of the promise of the early biotech companies from the 1980s I think is about to be realized in the next decade or so gene editing understanding of the DNA cheap DNA sequencing and a far far superior understanding of the biology of cells and the biology just causal causality of DNA vaccines cancer treatments immunotherapies for cancer just massive innovations that are going to change medicine for the better and there's going to be a lot of money to be made there second is technology as I said I think AI here is a dominant field I think the application for AI into all other fields is going to be tremendous I'm sure they're going to be robot companies they're going to benefit tremendously they're going to make a lot of money a lot of warehouses a lot of other places are going to continue to continue to one to move away from human beings into robots, robots don't strike robots don't want unions robots don't take lunch breaks robots don't take bathroom breaks and they're faster and more efficient so the move towards automation is going to be accelerated by AI and by the robotics technology so all of those are going to be profitable and then there's a lot of service industries that are going to be profitable some people are going to keep getting quite rich and because they're going to be very productive and going to be involved in these industries and those people are going to demand more services and more stuff not necessarily not necessarily physical stuff more likely kind of service stuff and then of course there's all the people who support all this accountants and lawyers and given that the government's not going to shrink accountants and lawyers are going to keep making money because they make money because the government makes running a business so complicated that you can't do it without hiring a bunch of lawyers and accountants this is why lawyers become politicians and as politicians they just make life even more complicated so you have to hire more lawyers thanks James really appreciate that and let's see Michael asks the main reason we're not at 1970s level of inflation and crime is because we have a tech sector that produces very high salary jobs and also produces social media which shames criminals making money afraid to go out there and commit crimes I don't think that's true I don't think social media shames criminals I don't think that's why people don't commit crimes to some extent I think we have less inflation because I think as much as I hate to give credit is due our central planners have learned how to avoid inflation or how to at least have less of it or what causes it they've taken some of what Wilson Friedman said seriously and they know that if they keep on putting money dropping money with helicopters or just giving us checks inflation will accelerate so they know and they saw what happened in the 80s you have to increase interest rates slow economic activity and so they have it more under control than they did back then they know more they don't know enough to stop it completely or to not get once in a while seduced into creating inflation but they know enough how to deal with it and they're dealing with it in this way but we are at a high standard living in the 70s and continue to be growing our economy because of the the tech sector I think the issue of criminals is a complicated one part of it is that we don't have as many young people young people are typically criminals and we don't have a lot of them we had a lot of them in the 1970s we just have few of them part of it is we send a lot of people to jail and getting people off the streets and into jail reduces crime people who commit even small crimes part of it is we just have a better culture that tolerates crime less I know that's hard to believe but there is a certain cultural element that just thinks you shouldn't do that, you shouldn't kill people you shouldn't you know and that's become more it's just become more institutionalized it's become more part of the culture in all parts of society this is part of why Europe is so you know free of crime relatively speaking it's exactly because of that because of it's part of the culture and you don't steal, you don't kill people it's wrong and people take it it's seep much deeper into society for rational irrational reasons but it just is I don't think it has to do with social media shaming crime started coming down in the early 1990s it was dropping like a rock in the 90s and 2000s well before social media existed indeed in the last 3-4 years it's ticked up a little bit although now in 2023 it's coming down again so many questions but thank you guys also dollars associated with them please no more 5-10 dollar questions just because of the sheer number and I don't know how you know at some point I have to go get dinner Andrew says but I shouldn't complain because you guys agree so thank you in times of stress when there are many tasks hanging over one's head but not get overwhelmed and proceed rationally to productivity it is hard I find myself oh my god so many things I mean the technique I use when it really gets bad when I can't just hold everything that I need to do in my mind and stop forgetting a lot of things like forgetting to do this video on Texas what I do is I stop making lists I'm really good I stop I say okay I'm gonna do a to-do list and I make the to-do list I put them all in writing and once it's all in writing a big list I then can sit down like I did a little bit of this this morning and I'm gonna do more of this tomorrow I just sit down and start doing them checking them off doing them doing them doing them doing just getting rid of them and getting that to-do list to shrink shrink shrink shrink until it's gone and I just focus on that and it's a way you know this part of the problem of getting overwhelmed is procrastination and just everything happening on all at once and if you put it down in paper you can prioritize but also you can see oh this is manageable this I can do right now and you just get them done and so that is one way I deal with that is through lists I'm going through a period like that right now over the last week and I've just created this big to-do list and I'm just trying to check them all off and getting them and prioritizing them but not on prioritizing them it's like okay I'm not doing anything right now I could send three emails let me do that check those off and you see the list start shrinking once it shrinks to a certain level you know you're doing fine alright Charles Butts says to you Baldrick the renaissance was just something that happened to other people this is in Blackadder 2 Blackadder highly highly recommend this one of the great comedies of all time four seasons yes four seasons and a different historical period the first of the dark ages the second in the was it the renaissance the third in the 19th century the fourth in World War I brilliant comedy super funny yeah Charles Butts thank you but Blackadder one of the great great TV shows of all time produced by the BBC like many of the great great great TV shows that were produced okay William says thank you for your show Blackadder one goes back in time to undo the subjective mechanisms in the sky put together by subjective socialists like free medicine free education undo the subjective ideals yeah but then you cannot go back in time to where there was no medicine no education that doesn't solve the problem you eradicate education you eradicate medicine because there was no education 99% of people got no education they were illiterate in a period where none of these things existed and on top of that you have to realize that religion is the most subjectivist of all subjectivist things because religion relies on pure emotion religion is not based on anything factual in reality religion is made up stuff that somebody subjectively makes up so religion is the ultimate in subjectivity now you think it's written in an old ancient book therefore it gives it objectivity now religion is dogma the dogma is there but it's subjective dogma it has no reality it's not connected to human nature it's not connected to facts of reality it's not even connected to what works or what doesn't it's just some subjectivist dogma that when practiced consistently like in 1220 leads to horror, death destruction, mutilation evil so it is not that religion is objective in some way and therefore is a counter to the left no, it's what the left is rejected that dogma is in his depth search for an alternative one a subjective dogma so conservatism inherently is what makes woke possible I mean all this leftist philosophy is ultimately caused by religion Marxism is secularization of Christianity and in post modernism is in some sense it's the rebellion against the subjectivism of religion and therefore asserting their own subjectivism but everybody agrees conservatism the left all agree reason regarding the impotence of fundamental essential impotence of reason and that's at the root of all evil Liam says you should have a lot more subscribe has given the amount of content you put out this is obscene maybe do another Lex Friedman interview debating someone of prominence I see A.R.Y's channel has 3x 3x as many subs as you that's true although I could use single handedly more content that I think they do I don't know I think I get a lot more unsubscribes than anybody else because my material I don't hold anything back you get exactly what I think what I think is super controversial what I think is super offensive to a lot of people and they leave so I think I get a higher level of unsubscribe than most channels out there I think that what prevents me from growing but yeah if you guys can influence Lex Friedman to have me back on I would love that Lex has not responded to emails recently so and I'm not even trying to get on I'm just trying to say hello to the extent that you guys can tweet or email Lex and ask him to have me on again I would love to go on I like Lex a lot so it's not just that it would get me subscribers it's more importantly it would be fun to do shake in thank you for more Norwegian Krone off topic do you think Russian athletes should be completely banned from sports even if opposing the government they are still contributing to Russia through taxes and income do they need to give up their citizenship you know I think that's a complicated area I think to the extent that they represent are they representing Russia I think they should be banned to the extent that they're representing themselves as individuals I don't think they should be banned you can't you can't ban them on the basis that they you can't ban them on the basis that they what do you call it that they are contributing taxes I think that's too difficult the fact is do you know the fact that the United States spends a billion dollars a year buying uranium from Russia I mean the US federal government spends a billion dollars a year to buy uranium from Russia our nuclear power plants in the United States are all run on uranium bought from Russia even with the sanctions and everything we're still spending a billion dollars a year buying uranium from Russia so why would you penalize athletes I mean only to the extent that they represent the country would I ban them Andrew what do you think of the attempt to reconcile Christianity with egoism by claiming that Jesus suffered and died for our sins so that we could enjoy life on Earth I mean that's complete nonsense I mean the reality is that Christians use guilt on us constantly original sin hasn't gone away just listen to the preachers preachers say oh you're fine have fun no problem Jesus died for you you can do whatever that's just not the reality and it's not truly reconcilable you know you're supposed to you're supposed to give up your mind of course they don't even know what egoism is so that's a whole other issue but there's no idea that you are free to go enjoy life you are sinful you are filled with original sin cult hasn't knows red-eyed rand's books he hates Iron Man he interviewed somebody about Atlas Shrug maybe some objectivist he interviewed him about Atlas Shrug but when he's not with somebody when he's commented on Atlas Shrug independently he hates it what does that say about him it says a lot about him also I remember the Clavin saying I don't want to go back to the Middle Ages as I wouldn't be able to make it unless I was a monk and that would still suck yeah well Clavin is a little bit saner but of course Clavin hates Iron Man too he despises Iron Man and Atlas Shrug but they they don't want to go back to Middle Ages but they still relish the Middle Ages in some bizarre way a drowsy llama do you think that nowadays content creators have taken the place that artists used to occupy in the culture when it comes to young adults and adolescents how did this happen and what are the consequences I don't think so because they're not getting art from content creators they're getting blah blah blah from content creators they're getting content from content creators I think to some extent content creators online are replacing magazines and talk radio or generally radio they're replacing I don't know and they're creating new stuff there's still a need in the culture for art and I think that is not satisfied we are unbelievably poor when it comes to aesthetics when it comes to art when it comes to beauty and I don't think that content creators are replacing that they're filling a different void but that void that void of art is still unfulfilled what is that I don't think that the content creators is a bad trend I think they're just a reflection of the culture they succeed to the extent that the culture wants them is somehow the culture finds them appealing so we get what we pay for I think the quality of the content creators is really a reflection of the quality of the culture to some extent maybe it's a self-fulfilling they make the culture even worse but yeah I mean the culture is getting worse attention spans are getting shorter people don't read anymore people don't consume real aesthetic experiences anymore when was the last time they did a long time ago I think and there's no ideas anymore it's just blah blah blah blah it's like the nonsense of the right about 1220 and the nonsense of the left about everybody's one of 98 genders it's all nonsense it's all we have left alright let's see so okay so we got the 5-10 questions left there are a lot of them I'm going to go through them fast we're already at an hour 35 so we'll do these fast Michael says why do people rebel against the need to abstract I think because it's hard it certainly requires effort and yeah it's challenging and sometimes if you do it the conclusions you come to might not be ones that you emotionally would like so I think that's why Michael also what's a good example of concrete bound thinking people often engage in God I hate to be asked examples it's hard to dredge them up but you know concrete bound is when you're just looking at you know elements in reality without integrating them really and without doing an integration I think much of the fallacies in economics have to do with concrete boundness that I described like the broken window fallacy that I talked about in the economics show the other day is a good example of concrete boundness that I think most people hold they only see the broken window and the new window being built and they see economic activity that's concrete they can't extract or have a level to actually see what's going on and almost all of economics is dominated by concrete boundness in that sense does Marx have more of an influence today than the Enlightenment ideas I don't think Christianity does I mean I think Christianity has the biggest influence in our world today much more than Marx and in a sense more than the Enlightenment because I think that even when you look at the left you look at the environmentalist movement and you look even at certain Marxist socialists Christianity is there all over the place Christianity is the dominant thing and that's because Christianity is the vehicle by which we receive altruism Christianity is the transmitter of altruism and to the extent that altruism is dominant in our culture by both religious and secular elements that is the job that what Christianity has brought to us and that's the way it is super influential today I think the Enlightenment is influential in a sense a subconscious level the Enlightenment is influential on our desire for new technology and our love of technology any place where you see this worldly attitude an attitude that's focused on self-help and happiness and production on and so I would say I would say actually today Christianity through the altruism and Enlightenment are far more influential than Marx and Christianity and the Enlightenment odds with each other and battling each other and the remnants of Marx and the remnants of postmodernism all of those are fighting and the Enlightenment is the weakest intellectually but the strongest existentially because pretty much everything everything around us practically depends on Enlightenment values and they're held they're held together because of a certain selfishness that everybody kind of carries with them even in this culture and a certain this is again they're fighting the Christianity and a desire for material well-being a desire for a certain level of happiness all of that is the Enlightenment ideas pushing through every time they talk about freedom every time they talk about rights that's the Enlightenment and that's still dominant this is why the world right now is still pretty good but it's constantly in battle with the secular manifestations of Christianity through Kant and Christianity itself Michael says is a soul something we're all born with or something we need to cultivate I see a lot of zombies who are there a soul is no substance, no depth no minds or character a soul is something you have to build a soul is something you create you make and a lot of people don't have souls because they never spent the time making it so I agree with you completely there are a lot of zombies out there but a soul is something that needs to be cultivated to create it to be built to be and it's the choices that you make the values that you choose that is what makes your soul that's what builds your soul Frank keeps calling me 666 I'll take it I'll take it because I'm so anti-Christian would you drink a half bottle of soy sauce for a million dollars sure why not I mean soy sauce won't kill you it's not harmful to you it doesn't taste that bad yeah why not you're offering that was not your average algorithm Gaya I'm looking forward to a big tech saving us valuable time on the phone in my lifetime me too me too and I think they will and I think they are Michael say Michael again do status intellectuals have more of a mafia mindset than a nihilist mindset the mafia never wanted to destroy business they want a business to operate so they can be excluded yeah I mean look people have complex mindsets where they have both right and so I think they both a a nihilism and a mafia and I think the mafia has elements of a nihilistic mindset so it's not like either or it's not like people are pure it's not like there's only one set of ideas that dominate people I think it's a complex web but there are many in politics who have a very much a mafia mindset because you know that's the kind of activities they engage in Apollo Zeus how is this applicable to US when it's based on European history well the US is just an extension of European history there is no US in 1220 and the US is a basically European migrants who come to the US and discover America and then populate America so there is no you cannot divorce US history or European history at least not until I say sometime in the middle 19th century they're so intertwined James are Indians a very intellectual culture that's why they take academic mysticism and collectivism seriously and India remains a ridiculous level of poverty no I don't think India is a very intellectual culture I mean India is a massive country of 1.4 billion people it's a very mystical culture it's a very superstitious culture and it's a culture based on the logistic caste system a system of people knowing their place and people in different castes so but you know it's collectivist, family oriented tribal oriented but I don't think they take it particularly seriously I just think they just are in that sense it's culturally quite primitive and the struggle within India is between that collectivism mysticism, superstition, all of that and a very educated population very smart engineering school very much oriented towards a reality that is a minority within India but again it's the two a lot of those immigrate out but a lot of stay in India and there's a struggle personally between the people who break away from that culture and the people who have who live under that culture not because they've embraced it because that's all they know not to average algorithm would you say there are more leftist or libertarians of Silicon Valley leftist I think pretty sure of that Valdrin, the new right does hate civilization Hollywood, California, New York where all innovation progress, art and prosperity but what is a woman most important question of our lifetime turns out Liam says which enlightenment philosophers explicitly emphasize individualism and reason in which writings oh I don't know I mean it's implicit in their writings and the individualism and I think that the reason is implicit it's certainly in Locke but it's a Newton idea that the human mind can just have a truth about the world the reason is there it's in the scientific revolution that happens during the 18th century it's in the writings of the Scottish Enlightenment who emphasize reason constantly and who emphasize the importance of individualism and then it's in pretty much all the founding fathers so from Locke on until you know with the exception of it's in Voltaire and it's in Diderot again not in its pure form not as individualism reason but it's implicit and it's being pushed and with regard to the efficaciousness of reason it's very explicit and often with regard to the value of the individual it's very explicit but in the French Enlightenment Scottish Enlightenment English Enlightenment it's throughout it's throughout Maribans, Michael Knows needs to be acquainted with cholera, dysentery bubalic plague, smallpox, sepsis yeah he would say oh no no he's not against the material advance we've made since then as if you can divorce the culture that existed in 1220 with economics of 1220 they got the economics the culture deserved and it's only when the culture changed could we get the economics and ultimately the healthcare that the culture made possible scientific revolution can happen in the culture of 1220 Daniel says what is your opinion of Charlie Cook I know he's a psycho Christian a lot of my friends in Iowa love him yeah I mean I know Charlie I've met him several times I knew him when he was just a high school kid and had just started turning point as a high school club thing so and I knew him when he was running the university clubs turning point and I spoke at several turning point conferences and Charlie started out being a huge fan of Ayn Rand being a little religious but no big deal not making a big deal out of religion a massive support of capitalism and he gave really good talks on capitalism much of the content from which he took for me and explicitly and he told me he'd taken them a lot of it for me watched a lot of my debates a lot of my lectures so he was I'd say in 2016 up until 2016 he was very much a conservative with strong free market leanings and pro-liberty generally and pro-freedom even on social issues I don't think it was particularly socially conservative back then and then Trump happened and he got very much became a part of the Trump phenomena he became very good friends with Trump's son I think he also as part of that became immersed in the in the new right again I don't think there is a new right without Trump Trump is the manifestation and he is the enabler of the new right and Charlie Cook became part of that whole mechanism and he flipped turning point USA from this pro-capitalism pro-liberty pro-funny fathers organization into much more of a new right like organization and and it's just become worse and worse and worse since then I haven't seen him in years but yeah I mean again he used to I think at Miami to some extent again copying my lectures that's all gone he used to love Ayn Rand I'm sure you hate Ayn Rand today he's become like Michael Knowles and Matt Walsh and in that thing and very popular among kind of the conservatives in the new right he's pro-Trump pro-religion pro- new right pro-you know all the bad things the right represents and he's not pro-capitalism anymore he's come out explicitly defending anti-capitalist stuff James I suspect Mr. DeSantis won't be such an anti-war president he's pandering to knuckle dragging religious primitives to get the nomination once in power he will be we will see Ronald Reagan 2.0 you know that's what John Fund told me a year ago but John Fund also told me a year ago that Donald Trump wouldn't run John Fund is a famous editor from the Wall Street Journal and a longtime conservative and knows all of these people personally and he was wrong on Trump I think he'll probably be wrong on DeSantis I mean I hope you're right that would be cool but I'm not convinced you're right and again I gave the example of DeSantis just signing this bill he could have legislated that a free market in auto sales let everybody either use auto dealerships or not make a choice but he went the status drop so Daniel Duffy wins I love when you go after these new right clowns thank you for all you do my pleasure Daniel I'm glad you enjoy James says you missed my $20 question earlier this week did I that's not good can you submit it again as a $2 question or something I'll answer it then will this alliance of must teal Rogan Peterson make the new right more potent or the entire movement too is integrated to achieve anything much more potent Musk gives it credibility and a platform teal gives it money Rogan gives it a platform Peterson gives it intellectual legitimacy Andrew knows this split he wants a rich technological economy based on intellectual and spiritual values that could only produce a gradient economy yeah I mean everybody wants that the left wants the same thing everybody wants an environment with no fossil fuels and yet all of us being rich of Marx wanted everybody to be rich without telling us how we could get there with no capitalism and so on so everybody wants that James G says with thoughts on the economy over the next 12 months will the USA China enter a new cold war did you see France banning short travel flights in the country yes actually spoke about France banning short flight a couple of times two or three times in my shows over the last couple of years so I think when the bill first passed and then a few weeks ago when it actually was implemented I don't know I mean the economy in the next 12 months I mean I still think we're heading towards a recession but I've been thinking that for a long time so I've been wrong so I don't counter my economic restrictions but it seems strange to me that we're not already in a recession so I still think we're heading towards one I don't know how long that recession is but generally the US economy seems to be super resilient, super flexible and what we're going to get is this just bouncing along at the bottom just a stagnating, boring inefficient economy there are a few simple things we could do to change that but we're not going to but so my sense of stagnation, recession and stagnation and some companies will do phenomenally well and that's why the stock market could still go up in spite of that Jeremy, my company takes Juneteenth off starting this year from making a new federal holiday it's not one I'm mad about it actually seems like a good thing to celebrate yeah I mean I think I don't know, celebrating in a sense getting rid of Jim Crow and getting rid of slavery and equal rights in a sense should be celebrated but I'm against federal holidays generally I mean, or state holidays I think people should just adopt the holidays that they want companies should adopt the calendar that they want not for the federal government telling us what to celebrate and what not to celebrate except for like the 4th of July I think the 4th of July should be a federal holiday I think that's pretty much it I think that's the only, because it's to celebrate this country and then for the government housing involvement but Christmas Thanksgiving cultural holidays, the company should voluntarily do that I don't think the government should do it and of course the government for its own employees should do it but I don't think declaring a federal holiday and all the hula-bala around that I don't think you need more of those the holidays I don't find Juneteenth offensive given that I think they should have combined it with Martin Luther King I think it's they're celebrating basically the same thing and they should combine them no one, the lack of subscribers may also be due to YouTube de-ranking live streams or so I've heard, that's interesting why would they do that, why would they de-rank live streams yeah, I don't know um Wesley says is she racist or merely a misguided nationalist? I don't know I mean she certainly plays to the racists she knows what she's doing she's smart she's probably a misguided nationalist who devades the racist content knows she's playing to them and just shrugs it off as that's what it needs to be in order to get ahead I deeply dislike her I think she's horrible I give her credit though I'll give her one thing I give her credit for she really went after Donald Trump went from her perspective he failed to curb integration the way she advocated the way he promised so you know she went all out on condemning Trump and waiting about how awful he was lying about the fact that he lied that he wasn't living up to his promises and I'm sure Costa with Trump's base so I give her credit for that but other than that she's horrific she's awful she lies her books are so badly researched um so awfully, awfully, awfully researched um she doesn't know what she's talking about when she talks about immigration for example she doesn't know what she's talking about when she talks about economics she's generally ignorant she's a good writer but an ignorant writer she doesn't know anything um Stefan are you familiar with the song in my life by the Beatles of course it's a beautiful song about romantic love being higher love above other relationships yeah I like the Beatles generally in my life is one of their most beautiful songs it's one of their best songs um absolutely uh so uh there you go it's funny because I somebody who loves Ann Coulter but then I said Ann Coulter is um is anti-Trump and they say yeah she has TDS Trump do age with syndrome but she's good at everything else they can't accept there is no such thing as accepting somebody who thinks that Trump is wrong because he is uh and and but without labeling him as TDS it's a fascinating sociological phenomena all right everybody thank you it's been an hour it's great uh two hours sorry two hours uh thank you everybody we raised $750 that's fantastic uh thank you for all the superchatters those who give stickers those who did uh the questions uh we've got a wide variety of uh questions from $2 to $150 that's fantastic and and we still got to $750 uh which is amazing uh so thank you uh don't forget if you don't undot on live and can't contribute live please consider using Patreon a subscribe star or PayPal through uranbookshow.com to support the show um you know if those of you who can do $100 or $250 or $500 a month please consider doing so I mean you you basically are the people who keep the show going so please do so but of course at any level I'm thankful and appreciative uh and I will see you all tomorrow there will be a show tomorrow uh to make up for the fact that I didn't do one um in the morning on Thursday and then on Friday have a great rest of your weekend long weekend don't forget