 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brook Show on this Tuesday evening. I hope everybody's having a great day. It's been just hours since I last saw you. So thank you for many of you for joining me again. This is the second show of today. Today we're going to review the book Dominion. We're going to talk about Dominion. We're going to talk about the book itself, the arguments it makes, and more broadly, we'll return to a topic we've talked about in the past, about the place of Christianity within Western civilization and the significance of Christianity for Western civilization. And that is, fundamentally, Western civilization, a Christian civilization. And so we'll talk about that. Really, coming out of Ayan Hirsi Ali's, would we say, conversion to Christianity? I don't know, but embrace of Christianity and her citing Dominion as one of the reasons for it is kind of the justification for a view that Western civilization is fundamentally Christian. If we're going to defend Western civilization, we do so from a stronger position as Christians than we would without it. So we'll try to evaluate that kind of perspective. And I've talked about this show, but it's good to keep repeating this. This is a big issue, and it's an issue that's confusing in our culture, and it's an issue that pretty much everybody else in the culture stands against me, against us, more broadly, and I think against objectivism and the position of objectivism with regard to Christianity and the role of religion in history. Before we do that, I want to remind you, of course, you can ask questions, Super Chat will, on the 31st of the month, be doing a big fundraiser, Super Chat, review of the year, looking at 2023, evaluating what's happened during the year, great opportunity to support the show, come in, ask a question, just do a sticker, and we're going to be trying to raise the numbers still not clear, but it'll be at least $10,000 that we'll try to raise in that one night, one afternoon, which is going to be challenging, but that'll be fun. That'll be part of the fun. We'll see if we can make it. I'll get the exact number that I want to get to as we get close to that date. Basically, I want to make this December a bigger month in the last December, so I need to know how much we raise pre-31st to be able to set the number for the 31st, so it's at least $1 more than what we did the year earlier. 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If you'd like to give more than $500 a month, contact me and we can arrange something that is never going to be a problem. Anything else? Oh yeah, of course, Jonathan is here. Hey, Jonathan. Jonathan will be on tomorrow at 7pm. Jonathan Honing, well-known. If you watch Fox, particularly Fox Business, Jonathan is a regular, has been a regular for many, many years. And is smart, entertaining and almost always right. That's a pretty lethal combination. And doing fantastic work on Fox to get the ideas of capitalism a broader hearing. Anyway, tomorrow we'll be going outside a little bit of Jonathan's financial expertise. And we're going to be talking about what Jonathan about his love of pets. He's a dog lover. Maybe more than that. I just don't know, but I know that he has dogs or has eight dog. We'll talk about why he loves dogs. What is it about liking dogs that appeals to him? And how, let it peak off. And in Rand, viewed pets. Why, in what way did they view them as a value? What value do pets serve for human beings? Why are pets a good thing? And again, this will be kind of a show that I will be listening because I do not have pets. I've never had pets. I can pretty safely say we'll never have pets unless Jonathan causes me to have a massive reevaluation of my priorities tomorrow. Anyway, it'll be a fun show. As I said, Jonathan is entertaining. I think he's got a little presentation for us. We're going to do a little PowerPoint slides, maybe. And of course, all of this or part of this is that Jonathan has a new book out on that he has with Leonard Peacoff with a number of commentary from Leonard Peacoff. But we'll hear more about the book tomorrow with Leonard Peacoff talking about his love of dogs and what values he gets from having had pets in the past and relating that to Ayn Rand's having pets and Ayn Rand cats, Leonard and I think Jonathan dogs. So anyway, that book is, I think, available already for sale. And Jonathan, we'll talk about that tomorrow, 7 p.m. East of Scotestine. Be there. It's going to be fun. And yeah. All right. What else? I think that's it. Tomorrow's show will be instead of Thursday that we know show Thursday. I've got a Christmas party I have to go to. And then I think Saturday is still on. And of course, we'll have our morning shows for the rest of the week. And then next week, all bets are off because it is after all Christmas and the new years. And I've got all kinds of stuff going on next week. And my son is visiting and there's a bunch of stuff going on. So I'm not committing much the next week. We'll probably take a bit of a time off before the 31st. But we'll see. We'll see. We'll do some. We won't do quite as many as we always do. All right. So let's jump in to talk about Dominion. And Dominion has been a very successful book. God, I actually don't know when it was published. I think it was published recently. But let's see. We'll get the publication date for you. The full name of the book is Dominion, How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. It was published in October 2019. I've seen it cited over and over again. It clearly has had a profound impact on the intellectual debate around Christianity. It is written by Tom Holland. Tom Holland is an historian who's written quite a bit of history. His expertise is ancient history. He's written a lot about Rome and a lot about Greece. Let me just say writer fun. He is a good writer. The book flows. It is interesting. He knows how to pick stories, how to pick concrete that are going to capture you, that are going to intrigue you, that are going to keep your attention. It's very well written. He lays out a thesis. I think the major flaw is in the thesis, but he lays out the thesis and he really is presenting the evidence for that thesis. We'll talk about some of that again. Again, very well written. I enjoyed it even though I found parts of it infuriating and I disagreed with much of it. I learned. There were interesting concretes and interesting stories. History is a story after all. I find I really love history. It just isn't a site, a personal site. I really, really enjoy reading history. Now I think in the middle of four different, maybe five different history books and I think five different history books and fascinating. Yes, he talks about, Tim says, did he mention Calvin? Sure, he talks about Calvin. Doesn't talk about Luther, I don't think. Anyway, part of the problem you're going to face is my memory. I should really review these books immediately after I finish reading them because it's so easy for me to forget the particulars. But anyway, we're not going to deal a lot with the particulars. We're going to deal with it as a very broad sense in both his thesis and his conclusion. But if you're interested in the history of Christianity, if you're interested in a kind of a broad sweep of history, if you can tolerate a book that has a thesis that you might disagree with, I certainly disagreed with it, this is well written and it's interesting. I also find that Holland is interesting because I don't think he is a practicing Christian. I don't know what he is. I don't know if he's slightly believing. I don't know his actual position on Christianity because I do know he believes Christianity has shaped and molded the modern world. The modern world is 100% a creation of Christianity, good and evil, which is interesting. With one exception, there's one evil he thinks is not Christian. We'll get to that as well. So that is the thesis. The thesis is the modern world is a creation of Christianity. That is how the Christian revolution remade the world, not just remade the world in the past, but we made the world today. So communism, a product of Christianity, the Enlightenment, ultimately a product of Christianity, and in that sense the industrial revolution, scientific revolution, capitalism, products of Christianity, woke, woke, product of Christianity. There's a sense in which he doesn't quite say it in the book itself, but I've seen him interviewed later on. I've seen him interviewed together with Douglas Murray being interviewed. And he says it there and he implies it in the book. The only kind of cultural phenomenon in the West, if you will, since the dominance of Christianity that he views as un-Christian or anti-Christian are the Nazis, which is interesting. The Nazis are the only anti-Christian phenomenon. Everything else is basically explained by Christianity. Even people who are not Christians, like woke, is a phenomenon of Christianity and we'll get to why that is. And this goes to one of the key, I mean, part of the problem with the book, part of the problem with him trying to prove this thesis, I think, is that he doesn't really comprehensively tell us what Christianity is. And there's a sense in which his view as Christianity is divorced from faith. Now clearly faith is a part of Christianity, but he doesn't hold it necessarily as a central part of Christianity. It is not the thing that drives Christianity in his view. Mysticism, spiritualism in that sense, faith, the faith that is a negation of reason doesn't really play a big role here. So let me tell you what are the things that Dominion presents as Christian. And part of these I don't know enough about the history, about the history of philosophy and ideas, to be able to say definitively whether Christianity is the source of these unequivocally. But it is interesting. This is at least the view of Dominion. And I think that the one that he really comes across, and the one that I think is most convincing in the entire book, in terms of its impact on the modern world, its impact certainly on things like communism and woke and why he views communism and woke as fundamentally Christian or as impacted, derived from in some way Christianity, is he associates some version of the morality of altruism. He never names it as altruism, of course, but some version of the idea that the meek shall inherit the earth. Some version of the idea that it is a suffering and pain and struggle and oppression that there is virtue associated with that. And that Christianity is the first system of thought in his view that cares about the oppressed and that elevates the oppressed and that gives moral validity to the oppressed. And so in that sense, the focus on the poor, the meek, the oppressed, that to him, that kind of modern intersectional view of oppression and of poverty and of suffering, that he views as a central thesis in Christianity. And of course, associated with that is this idea of sacrifice, you know, this idea of Jesus sacrificing himself on the cross. A brutal death, a death he describes in the book quite well is one of the most brutal deaths possible in terms of what could imagine dying and how that is essential to Christianity, this idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice to whom? Well, sacrifice to the poor, the meek, the suffering. So a real grounding of altruism and self-sacrifice as an essential moral discipline, again not his term's mine, but as an essential moral principle that Christianity brings to the world. And here I think he's right. I think the biggest impact Christianity's had on the world and its most, if you will, most negative impact has indeed been its emphasis on altruism, on sacrifice, on suffering, on the virtue of those and on the promise that the meek should inherit the world. You know, it's interesting. Of course, this is, of course, the relationship with many of the modern ideologies, many of almost all modern morality, which is basically an altruistic morality. And basically the idea is that from the beginning of Christianity, this has been, as Christianity became dominant, this became the dominant morality and really it has seen no alternative. And there's a sense in which he's right. There have been alternative, proposed, none very consistently, coherently. You know, as we talk more about the Enlightenment, as I'm reading more about the Enlightenment, the Enlightenment certainly tried to develop a morality of self-interest and a morality of human happiness. But even it, I think, was stuck in a kind of Christian perspective, a perspective of altruism, maybe more on a collectivism. But yes, Christianity dominated altruism throughout the entire period of time. Again, like we'll see in many of the principles, it also applied to selectively. So it did not believe in sacrificing Christians, the non-Christians. It did not believe sacrificing Christians to Jews, even if Jews were suffering. Christianity did not hold sacrificing Christians to pagans. Pagans were put to the sword. But this orientation, this focus, which I think it's true would have been foreign to the Greeks and certainly the Romans, on the poor, on suffering, on, you know, the people who are not able, if you will, on the oppressed. Whether that is original to Christianity, I don't know, but certainly Christianity made it the dominant view in the world. And I would argue not to our benefit, not to the benefit of the world and indeed part of what Western civilization is, is at least a beginnings of a rejection of that view, which happens starting in the Enlightenment, maybe even before the Enlightenment, maybe even during the Renaissance. So altruism sacrificed one core foundation of Christianity. A second is the idea of equality, of equality of man. And equality is a term, egalitarianism is a term thrown around by thinkers constantly. Unfortunately, without specifying a real context, without specifying what they actually mean, what does it mean to say we're all equal? Is it the funny father's sense in which we're all equal in rights? Is it a communist or a modern egalitarian sense and where we all equal, should be all equal in outcome? Are we all morally equal before God? Are we equal before the day of judgment? Well, we know that's not true because some of us go to hell and some of us go to heaven, even according to Christianity. But there is a certain sense in which he claims that Christianity held from Paul on, at least from the Gospel of Paul on and from Paul's letters on. The idea that all men are created equal, all men are children of God, in that sense they shouldn't be masters and slaves. They shouldn't be aristocrats and kings. Of course, they are popes and bishops and regular people and so on. But it's implicit, this idea that we're all equal and therefore, as he and others would argue, this kind of leads the Declaration of Independence and the equality of man and equality of rights and natural rights kind of come out of this tradition of equality. And in the book, Dominion makes argument that basically the first people to argue against slavery, whether it was in the first millennium, all the way to the abolition of slavery, all are Christians and they all do it from a Christian perspective, a Christian framework. It is Christianity that leads for the first time in human history to arguments for the abolition of slavery. Again, whether that is true or not, historically I'm skeptical, but this is the claim Dominion makes. This is all a product of Christianity. We'll get to what is a product of what in a minute. The other thing that's uniquely Christian and this is, again, this is true. This is, I think, unequivocally true. Christianity to a large extent is a rebellion against Judaism. And it's a rebellion against a particular feature of Judaism and that is the exclusivity of Judaism. Christianity's view is, wait a minute, only they have a relationship with God? God chose only them? That doesn't make any sense if God is the real God, is the true God, if his ideas are true and real, shouldn't they apply to everybody? Aren't all men the creation of God? Why is Judaism different? Why are Jews chosen? And indeed, the whole interpretation of Jesus coming is to bring God's message to all of mankind. Christianity is the, and this is, by the way, why Christianity, you know, it doesn't weigh with a lot of the restrictions, a lot of the laws, a lot of the difficulties that Jews have to engage in in order to stay Jews. So you don't have to be circumcised, and you can eat pork, and you can eat pretty much anything. And there are no, I think that my monotheism says there are 500-something laws that every Jew has to practice all the time, and not just women and Jews. Christianity says, no, no. All you need is to recognize Jesus and his love, right? That's it. You know, it's all in your heart. It's all right here. It's all implicit. Yeah, the Ten Commandments are true. The fundamental basics of God's law are true. But all this detailed stuff that partially acts to separate Jews from everybody else? No, no. Dump that. We want to make this religion really, really easy. And we want to make this religion universal. And at least in the West, this is the first universal religion. Islam is the second. But paganism never attempted universality. You had your gods, we had our gods. That's fine. You know, who's to say, my God's true, your God's not. You know, the gods will fight it out. And we'll discover in the battlefield whose gods are stronger, right? Whose God is good, whose God is real. Christians also said that. We'll discover in the battlefield whose God is real. But this God rules all gods. All other gods are gone, right? And he is a God for all people. And his law is for all people. And these principles you have to abide by are for all people. So a universality is, I think, new. This idea of a universal principle that applies to everybody in terms of religious truth. Now, I think that Greek philosophers believed in universality. They believed their ideas were universally true. I don't think they believed that their ideas, as they related to philosophical knowledge, applied only to the Greeks, only to the time, only to the place. But in terms of a religion, this is counter to Judaism, which is a sect, a tribe. It applies only to this tribe. Christianity applies to everybody. And Islam has exactly the same perspective, applies to everybody. It does have a bunch of different laws. See, Judaism and Islam are religions of laws. Christianity has really very few laws. Christianity is a system of beliefs. And it's a system that doesn't prescribe detailed human behavior. It prescribes certain principles that have to be followed. But in Judaism, everything is prescribed in Islam. Every action is prescribed, how you treat your wife is prescribed, what you eat, what you don't eat. This is true in Judaism and in Islam. And Christianity doesn't give you that level of detail. It's developed certain systems of, again, belief. And one of the reasons Christianity has fragmented so much is because all those beliefs are, I mean, is the Trinity really, is there any basis for the Trinity in the Gospels? No, not really, not in the sense of which they decided that it was in the Council of Nicaea. And then there were five, six different interpretations over the first few centuries of Christianity. And then, of course, there were always cults and communities that spun off from Christianity. By the way, I didn't realize how many in the history of Christianity, but I've written up two books on the history of Christianity, Christendom and this. How many Communist sects claiming to be the true Christians spun off from Christianity and rejected the Catholic Church and rejected the Catholic hierarchy and rejected the wealth and the kind of life that the popes and bishops and everybody else lived and demanded true equality. They took the equality that Christians talk about, not as just equality in some sense before God, but equality of outcome. And they resented the fact, resented the fact that the Church did not embrace equality of outcome and didn't live in this communist heaven. And time and time again, almost every century, there was some group of people somewhere in southern France in Austria, Germany, in Italy that spun off and started its own communist type of community with no idea of private property and everything is communal and equality of outcome as much as they could. So this idea of communism is very much embedded in the Christian tradition, very much embedded in this idea of equality and universalism. And of course, the altruism and sacrifice all fit in with this idea. There's a repeated reference in Dominion, which I find interesting. Every time a new discovery is made, anytime a philosopher or a thinker or an intellectual, argues for change, argues for betterment, argues for progress, argues for improvement. Even if he does so from a secular philosophical perspective or scientific perspective, Tom Holland in Dominion says, oh, that's just Christianity. Because one of his principles of Christianity is Christianity is a call to bring the world from darkness into light. So anytime we bring light to the world, anytime we shine a light, or we improve life, or we move the world in the right direction, he says that's Christianity. Now, altruism, I'm going to give credit to Christianity. Universalism, not really because it's only universal in the sense of a universalist religion, but the idea of universal truths existed in ancient Greece, existed in Greek philosophy. But the idea of bringing light from darkness is Christianity, is indeed Christian, strikes me as a massive rationalization. Every time the book encounters an achievement by somebody who's not in the name of Christianity, it comes up with, you know, here's one sentence about Voltaire, for example, who was a believer, but not a believer in God, but a huge critic of Christianity. He says, there's nothing quite so Christian as a summons to bring the world from darkness into light. Well, in that sense, then everything is Christian because every new knowledge, every new achievement is Christian, but that's silly. Holland does not spend much time on faith, on what we would typically call religiosity. He does not spend much time on original sin, which is a key feature of Christianity. But the biggest real, I'd say, flaw in the book, I mean, here is another sentence. This is a flavor, this is often the chapter on the alignment, this is a flavor of how he writes and how he makes these obvious, these connections attributing everything to Christianity without really any substance. He says, well, the dream of a universal religion was nothing if not Catholic. So even when he talks about, he's talking about Voltaire as a huge critic of the Catholics, right? He's talking about Voltaire who wants a universal religion that gets rid of the Catholic Church, that gets rid of a lot of the hierarchy, that simplifies it, that returns it to a basic moral code and a certain level of spirituality. Well, that's just the origins of Catholicism, it's the same thing, but you lose all the subtlety when you do that. It's the kind of argument that what is actually going on. When he says, here's another one, you know, Spinoza, what does he say there? He says, the charges of Voltaire leveled against Christianity that it was bigoted, that it was superstitious, that its scriptures were rightful with contradictions were none of them original to him. All had been honed over the course of two centuries and more by pious Christians. So Voltaire didn't make anything up, he just took this from Christians. Christianity is self-critical. I mean, he says, Voltaire's got like the Quakers, like the Collegians, like Spinoza's, was a deity whose contempt for sectarian wrangling owed everything to sectarian wrangling. So, superstition is the religion, what astrology is the astronomy. That is the very foolish daughter of a wise and intelligent mother, that's Voltaire. Voltaire's dream of the brotherhood of man, even as it casts Christianity as something fractious, parochial, murderers, would not help but betray its Christian roots. So here's, I mean, the fundamental problem with the book. I mean, the problem is that this whole era, of course, is a Christian era. The whole context of the development of Western civilization is the context of Christianity. Christianity is everywhere. Christianity is, it dominates everything for 2,000 years. So if you attribute intellectual causation to what came before, then what came before is always Christianity. It's always there. If you want to find, if you say, well, Voltaire didn't say anything original because other people said it before him, and they were Christians, even though he might not consider himself Christian, they were. Therefore, he's just modeling Christianity. That's just ridiculous. Voltaire puts it in a different framework. He's putting it in the context of criticizing Christianity, Quaker Christianity. Now, Voltaire was still religious. But even the atheists, like Spinoza, he argues the same thing. He says, for example, he says about the radical enlightenment, the more atheist. He says they remain sufficiently Christian that they wish to bring light to the entire world. So if you seek to change the world, if you seek to bring light to the world, to bring knowledge to the world, to improve the world, you're a Christian because Christianity wanted to do that. Even though what you want to do is reject God, reject the original sin, you know, but you're accepting universality, and many of these thinkers unfortunately accepted altruism, but therefore you're a Christian. But that's so shallow understanding of the world of ideas in history. It's so meaningless. Yes, Christianity was there all along. It was always in the background. But much of the progress that was made, and we'll get to the progress in a minute, much of the progress that was made was made by people who constantly pushed against elements of Christianity. And I would say that the ultimate progress, the progress that shaped Western civilization, the shape Western civilization was the rejection of the foundations of Christian belief. Indeed, during this enlightenment, implicitly and explicitly. And indeed, the progress made throughout the last 2000 years, at every point when progress is made, it is made by those who are challenging Christian orthodoxy. Now, the fact that some of them are still Christian, the fact that some of them are still held on some Christian beliefs, you can't then embrace them as part of Christianity. It's really interesting, the few things that are omitted from Dominion with one small exception. The influence of the Greeks on Christianity and on the people who might have been Christian, but were influenced by Greek philosophers throughout the ages is really omitted. There's some talk of Aristotle, mainly because Christians, he views Christians of adopting certain ideas, and then it's, I think it's convenient then with Aquinas and convenient, follow on in the scholastics, that he views Aristotle as, in a sense, compatible with Christianity and therefore, you know, he had some influence on them, but not much. But what's stunning is that the Greek philosopher had the most influence on the Christians, and who shaped the very nature of Christianity, particularly early on, but really throughout, and who molded Christianity is Plato. And Plato's never mentioned, I mean, I think there's one sentence where maybe the neo-Platonist is mentioned, but not in trying to explain where Christians got many of the ideas and how Christians justified the ideas that they did have. I mean, if Christianity, it's much more plausible to me that the entire modern world is a product of Plato, because Christianity is a product of Plato. Christianity is so much, is so influenced by Plato's view of reality. Now, again, maybe, you know, the altruism is not really there, the altruism of sacrifice is probably not there, really there in Plato. But other than that, you know, and pretty much every other book on Christianity lays out the neo-Platonic foundations of Christian belief and Christian ideas, and how Plato's ideas shaped and guided Christianity throughout the period. Indeed, if you know something about kind of the objective view of history, to a logic stand, the objective view is that all of the history of the West is a battle between the influence of Plato and Aristotle. And Plato represented primarily through that period by Christianity and by Platonistic thinkers. None of that is in the book, which is truly interesting. And again, I think it's trying to make a particular argument, and then his stories, his bits, his segments of history that he presents to us are geared towards making that argument. And the facts that he tells us are geared towards making a particular argument. And Plato just doesn't have a role in there, because Plato undermines it, because Plato, you would have to argue, is if not the source of Christianity certainly has a massive impact on it. And in that sense, Christianity itself is a product of Greece. One second. Right back. And Aristotle makes very little appearance. And you know what error makes zero just isn't there? It just skipped over completely, which is just again stunning for history that is trying to show that Western civilization is fundamentally Christian. And yet maybe the error most important to Western civilization in terms of it, I would argue redirecting it maybe away from Christianity. No mention of the Renaissance. None. You're not a Da Vinci Michelangelo, Raphael, the thinkers, playwriters, Shakespeare. The whole Dutch environment and both of not only great art, but commerce and banking and industry, the Renaissance is just omitted. Maybe it's omitted because it's a Renaissance of what? Not of Christian or Jewish ideas. It is a Renaissance. It's a rebirth of Greece. That would confuse the story. Maybe the story is not, as it turns out, a story of the dominance of Christianity over the West. Maybe Christianity is just a feature of the dominance of Greece over the West. Maybe Christianity is a detour from Greece and the Renaissance brings us back. And it brings us back to Greece that is very different to Christianity. A Greece that rejects original sin. A Greece that is positioning universal values with values that are very different than Christianity. It's a Greece of beauty. It's a Greece of the achievements of man, the beauty of man. It's a Greece of not of equality, of outcome, certainly. And a Greece that is starting, at least in the Renaissance, you get the beginnings of questioning of some of this altruism. This worldly Greece, a Greece of this world, of happiness in this world. I mean, there's real debates and discussions about happiness. You should all read the biography of Leonardo da Vinci. It's fascinating. And it's bringing light from darkness. The light of Greece from the darkness of Christianity. So the whole book is skewed. It's skewed towards a presentation of causal relationships that don't exist. It's also skewed towards a causal relationship that just says, this came before that. Or this was said before that. There's no recognition of where ideas come from. In a sense, you could boil down to dominionists saying everything really starts with Paul, because he attributes Christianity to Paul, really. The possible. Everything starts with Paul. You can extrapolate all the modernity from what Paul said. All of their disagreements within Christianity, all the agreements. You can extrapolate communism, but also capitalism and also the Enlightenment and also blind faith. All can be attributed to ultimately to Paul, but that's bizarre. That just means it's meaningless if it incorporates every possible iteration, every possible. Or it's full of contradictions, which it is. I mean, that's the nature of religious text. Religious text is written in such a way that you can find whatever you want in it. That's true of the Old Testament. It's true of the New Testament. Whatever you want, you will find it. But that's not a proper intellectual history. So are the radical Enlightenment coming out of Spinoza and primarily in France who are explicit atheists? Are they Christians? Well, in a sense that maybe they were influenced by Christian altruism, maybe. But their advocacy for reason, for science? Well, you know, Dominion will tell you Christians always believed in reason. Indeed, Paul talks about reason in his testimony. But is that what he means? Is it the same reason? Here maybe we can also discuss the difference between Plato and Aristotle and their perspective of what the human mind does. But that's the kind of analysis that you would actually have to have. But that would require you to talk about Aristotle and Plato and not about Christianity. Yes, it is true that Newton was a Christian, although he doesn't really talk about Newton. But Newton taught us something about the world that Christianity does not. And that is through observation, induction, and the use of logic and ultimately deduction, we can really understand the physical world. We can explain all the things that are going on around us in the physical world. There's nothing Christian about that. Christianity tells us the explanation lies in Revelation, in God. Now, it's true that once Aquinas brings Aristotle into the Catholic Church, they, you know, have a little bit more respect for empiricism. And that is embraced in the Renaissance by people like Bacon. But does that make it Christian? Or is Aquinas bringing in an external element, trying to integrate it with Christianity? But then that external element is what goes on to lead us towards a scientific revolution and towards a secular revolution. Is Newton being a Christian when he does science? Or is Newton actually expressing a foreign element, something un-Christian when he's doing science? And yes, he, like Aquinas, is trying to integrate it all, but can't really because of the contradictions. So I find in the end that Dominion is unconvincing. And it doesn't quite understand what the West is. Nobody does. I mean, it's shocking to me. It really is shocking how few intellectuals out there, including, it turns out, Ein Jose Ali and many others, understand what the West is or what civilization is. Civilization is not just the sequence of events that have happened since the birth of Christianity to date. Civilization is not just what we've landed up with. Civilization is a consequence not of the Christian, theocratic ideas of Constantine, or of Augustine, or even of Aquinas. Christianity is the rejection of those ideas. I mean, sorry, civilization is the rejection of those ideas. What the Renaissance and the Enlightenment establish is the validity of reason to understand the world, to comprehend reality, to explain the physical world. It is a rejection of revelation. It's a rejection of the scriptures. It's a rejection of the entire epistemology of Christianity, which Dominion doesn't really talk about. Not explicitly, not in those terms, only implicitly. So the Enlightenment and the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and certainly the scientific evolution are a rejection of the epistemology of religion and an embrace of an Aristotelian epistemology that's looking out there into the world and is using reason to understand it. It's also implicitly a rejection of an altruistic morality. Now here, it's sad that they're not more explicit about it, but it is. It is a focus on beauty. It is a focus on happiness. It's the exact opposite of the focus Christianity places on suffering, on the meek, on an afterlife, on achieving something in the afterlife, getting through this world. It's a focus on human happiness and on the value of an individual, not to serve, not before a God, not for some other motive, but of an individual in and of himself. Because his own happiness is his purpose. And again, they could have been more explicit, but the Declaration of Independence does say you have an indelible right to pursue happiness, happiness, individual happiness, your happiness. And it's not just there, it's all over the enlightenment. Happiness is all over the enlightenment. This idea of, this pursuit of, and it's all about the individual, the individual living a good life. One of the things that shocks people in enlightenment is they come to their realization shockingly to them because it's so anti-Christian. You can read this in many of the enlightenment thinkers. They go, pleasure, it's good. There's nothing wrong with pleasure. Pleasure is a good thing, not a bad thing. Now some of them even try to build a whole more system just on the issue of pleasure versus pain, which is in the right direction. That's what you should be looking. I forget the name of the French enlatement figure who writes a whole, you know, tries to develop a whole morality, a whole moral system just off of the idea of pleasure, good, pain, bad. Friend of the draws, the draws are very critical. There's a huge exchange there, but it's, this is the kind of idea that is very anti-Christian. Happiness, pleasure on this world, good, positive, things we should pursue, not at all consistent with this view that Christianity shapes the world. So I think starting in the 19th century, starting in the late 18th century, certainly in 18th century, certainly into the 19th century and the 20th century, all that is good, all the positives, really consequences of this rejection of Christianity and an embrace of reason and individualism. Somebody says, Audi says, sounds like Epicurus. Yeah, I mean, Epicurus was one of the influences on many of these intellectuals. And again, not a particular Christian influence, right? I mean, it comes through Lucretius, the famous poem. I think it's Lucretius. Roman poem that is discovered in the 1400s and is copied and distributed and spread around and has a huge impact on the way people think about life. And it's the first treaty that really presents, one of the first, that really presents atheism. The non-existence of a God is a viable option. And again, has a huge impact. And it changes the culture. Is that Christian? Well, if it changes the culture, it's Christian because it brought light from darkness. But that's superficial. It's nonsense. And indeed, I would argue, and I think Dominion would agree in a sense, although not in the narrow sense, that certainly communism, wokeism are an attempt to hold on to the most pernicious. And the one thing Christianity has indeed, very few people, almost nobody has actually let go of, which is this in one form or another, in one way or another, in one degree or another. Altruism as the only real legit morality. And again, that's communism and woke. Now, again, they view fascism and at least Nazism as anti-Christian because it explicitly rejects the morality of altruism. But of course, that's a question of what is the... There's still an other-ism element in the exploitation of other people, right? You're still dependent on other people. The real opposition to altruism is individualism. As egoism, you cannot claim that the Nazis were egoists. They were all about sacrifice. They were just a sacrifice of a different God. And they were not about equality in the sense that the Christians meant it, or in the sense that the egalitarians mean it. So they were not Christian, but I don't think the communists were really Christian. They were religious. They took different elements out of Christianity. But Dominion really focuses on the equality, on the altruism, as what defines Christianity. And in that sense, yeah, they've defined the modern world and everybody seems to embrace them. But that's not what created the modern world. What's created the modern world has always been the voices in opposition. It's always been the voices stood up for reason. It's always been the voices stood up for individualism. Even the voices that advocate against slavery, are they truly Christian voices? Or do they happen to be Christian? But they've come to certain conclusions based on evidence and based on the reality and based on the injustice of slavery. So, yeah, I mean, while I enjoyed reading Dominion, it's really disappointing to see how seriously people take it. It's really not a clearly defined serious proposition. It confuses cause and effect. It, you know, has such a broad meaningless definition of Christianity that everything falls under it. And again, enjoyable, interesting. But fails in trying to convince that Western civilization is fundamentally Christian. It is true that the bad that exists today in our civilized world, the uncivilized, tends to be the Christian or Muslim, the good. The things that really are an achievement are the things that have come to us from an Aristotelian tradition, from an anti-Christian perspective, from a rejection of Christianity, and from really from an embrace of reason and individualism, reason and some form of individualism. Whether it's science, whether it's political freedom, whether it's individual liberty, whether it's the enjoyment of sex, you know, the attitude, a positive attitude to its pleasure. Those all come to us from those thinkers who rejected Christianity, those thinkers who took this worldly Aristotelian line and rejected the other worldliness and the self-sacrifice implicit in, not explicit, explicit in Christianity. All right. Hopefully that, I mean, you could go on for hours and hours and hours, particularly if you had the book in front of us and actually analyzed, you know, the different segments and the different chapters. But that gives you a sense of it. I mean, fundamentally the book is, does not establish the cause of relationship. You just establishes that Christianity was everywhere during this period. It doesn't establish that Christianity caused any of this. And the absence of Greece, the absence of the Renaissance, the absence of the influence of Aristotle is just a gaping hole in this thing. If you really want to book that surveys the history from the perspective of ideas that I think is far closer to truth, far closer to a correct perspective, I urge you to read The Cave in the Light. The Cave in the Light. That is basically a perspective on Western history that is from the perspective of the battle between Plato and Aristotle, the competing influence that Aristotle and Plato have. And I would still love to see an objectivist one day, you know, but it has to be somebody of a caliber who can do this, pull this off. Doing The Cave in the Light with a deeper understanding of philosophy, even a deeper understanding than what, and I forget the author's name of Cave in the Light, I'll get it for you in a minute. By the way, bringing, what is it, bring light from darkness? Bring light from darkness? Cave in the Light? I mean, that is directly a metaphor from Arthur Hulman. Thank you, Arthur Hulman wrote The Cave in the Light. It's directly a metaphor from Plato. And Arthur Hulman uses it as a contrast of the cave, darkness, which is Plato, light, which is Aristotle. But The Cave in the Light is bringing light from darkness and so it can't be, it can't be Christian. I mean, the whole essence of that is Greek philosophy. It is Plato. I mean, Plato says he's bringing light into the cave or he's bringing the truth into the minds of people who are committed, who cannot observe the truth directly, right? Who cannot get the revelation. And that's where Christianity gets this whole concept. And to ignore that, that even this concept of bringing light to the people, bringing truth to the people comes from Plato. And again, this is a scholar of Greek history. Maybe he's not a scholar of Greek philosophy, but God, this is 101. This is not that hard. But people are enamored by this book, really enamored by this book. And it's not a good sign for our culture that this is the kind of book that goes out there because it kind of convinces people that Christianity is a lot better than it really is. It convinces people that Western civilization is fundamentally Christian. And therefore, if we're going to defend Western civilization, we have to defend Christianity. And no, no, no, no, no. The achievement of Western civilization is predominantly Greek. It's predominantly Aristotle. It's predominantly a secular view of the world. It's not exclusively Aristotle. It's by, you know, the whole Greek culture. And what is Greek culture? Which is captured in the Renaissance. It's a culture of beauty. It's a culture of celebration of man. It's a culture of pleasure, of embracing pleasure in life, in living. And that, if you could, finding ways to thread that, I can't believe there's some of that, but it would be good to do it even more so in a sense of threading throughout the history of the West, not just Aristotle's explicit ideas, because those explicit ideas were partially what shaped the future, but also those ideas were already implicitly, to some extent, in Greece, in a sense of they were a cultural phenomenon in Greece. Yeah, thought criminal beings are free will versus Christian determinism, but Christians also believe that they are the saviors of free will. One of the great tragedies of modern time is that it is now presented as if you're an atheist, then you are a materialist and you are against free will. And the only people who defend free will are the religionists. I mean, there's supposedly a debate out there between Ben Shapiro and some atheists, and a big part of it is around Asia free will, and this is where they disagree. And Ben Shapiro is defending free will. What a travesty. He can't defend free will by the very nature of his kind of a god. There is no free will. All right, I mean, understanding where we come from, understanding the ideas that are foundation of our society and civilization is so crucial. And then, in order to defend it, and understanding how Iran is an improvement of those ideas, and how Iran takes at the next level and solidifies those ideas is going to be crucial to the defense of Western civilization, of civilization, you know, happens to be in the West, but of civilization. And I don't think you could fully appreciate Iran and how she changes the world, how she changes ideas without understanding how shaky everybody is until Iran in terms of the defense of reason, and of, you know, a semblance of egos. But if you're stuck in this idea that it's all Christianity, you're never going to be able to defend the West. What are you defending? You're defending the worst of the West, not the best of the West. In my view Christianity, and I've said this before, in my view Christianity is the enemy of Western civilization, not the cause of it. It is what hampers it. It holds its back. And it is ultimately an inspiration for the worst ideologies that keep fighting. It's the anti-enlightenment. The battle we're in, the battle of the 20th century, and the battle of the 21st century, is the enlightenment versus the anti-enlightenment. And Christianity is clearly the leading ideology of the anti-enlightenment. Oh, maybe with Islam now, right? But it's the anti-enlightenment. It's what inspired both the left and the right's worst elements. Worst elements. Yeah, I mean, Judaism is not a good thing. Somebody says, you say that about Judaism too. Yeah, I'm not pro-Judaism. I reject Judaism and Judaism is an enemy, particularly if you take it seriously. Judaism, Judaism is an enemy of civilization. Absolutely. The thing about Judaism is that Judaism will never have a huge impact on the world because Judaism is exclusive. It is a religion that's not universal. It's why they're only, I don't know what, 15 million Jews in the entire world, and there are billions of Christians and billions of Muslims because they're not exclusive. They are universal. But there's no question. I'm not saying Christianity versus Judaism. No. Christianity just has the impact. Christianity is everywhere. Christianity is dominant. And it is hampering progress. Judaism is just not relevant. It's not a relevant ideology. It's not a relevant view of the world. By the way, one of the things I'll credit Dominion with is that there's a sense in which it views ideas as guiding history, although again, he has this, the ideas are not held clearly and not articulated clearly. But it is, there is a sense that ideas are shaping the world. But I don't think you differentiate and articulate what those ideas really are. All right. Let's see. All right. We have a few questions, but not many. So for an evening show, very few. I wanted to thank Mike for $50. Really, really appreciate. Thank you, Gail. And thank you. Yeah, I know Jonathan was there and a few others who gave stickers early on, but it's all lost. I apologize. I can't get to it. But thank you to all the stickers. You two can, you know, this is a, this show is made possible, as they say on NPR, by contributions made by people like you, and by you in many of your cases. You can support the show. You can support it right now if you're live with us by providing a sticker or a super chat. You can support the show in a variety of different ways, monthly contributions. But, you know, for a live show, the most exciting fun part is to do it through asking questions and putting your dollars with questions that way you get to guide the show. You get to focus what I discuss, right? Because you get to ask me questions and I promise to answer all the super chat questions on any topic you want. You can talk about the topic of today's show, or you can ask a question about any other topic. You can ask a question for $2, 5, 10, 20, 150, 250, I think up to 500. I don't think you can go over $500 for a question, but we need a $500 question right now. If we're going to get to the target, $500 would come in handy right now. This is again the way we fund the Iran book show. I only have five questions. If that's all we have, then we'll call it a night. Shelly says, I'm writing a fantasy story mostly for fun and I'd like your take on what an objectivist God divine being would look like. I know it's silly, but I'm curious as to how you'd go about imagining such a thing. God, I don't know. You're definitely getting off the cuff comments, which I don't think. Okay, you're an objectivist and you have, well, you're just a rational being and you have these kind of powers and you have unlimited powers. And this is the problem, right? If you read Ayn Rand, she's got a segment about the immortal robot, right? The robot that cannot die, that cannot get hurt, in a sense, cannot feel pain and he's just always going to be there. Can I be unplugged? Can I go out of existence? In that case, her argument is, and I think she's right, he has no values. Nothing to strife for, nothing he cares about, no passion, no values. So a God would have no values. You couldn't have an objectivist God because, and this is, it's just, I get that you're trying to do something, but it's just not doable because you're taking outside of the realm of what objectivism relates to, it's just human life. God is a negation of that kind of life. It is a valueless being that exists for no reason. What reason could a God have to exist? What purpose does such a God serve? He can't go out of existence by very nature as a God. Is there a pleasure-paying mechanism? What, what? Everything else, our curiosity, our interest, all in service of life. They're all in service of our need to survive. Oh no, Shazba, you can't do that to me. All right, I'm sorry I get distracted, but Shazba just put $200 in. I can't ignore that for me to review a Metallica song. He knows what he's doing, right? He knows, you know, that I probably don't like Metallica, and he does this on purpose. All right, I will review, I owe you a song already. This is the second song I owe you, and I know somebody, I owe somebody an album, a whole album, and I do owe a science fiction movie to someone. I still need to look for that and find it to watch it. But I need to catch up on the songs and the music and give a review of them. So thank you, Shazba. I will take the $200 even if I have to listen. I think it's worth it to listen even to Metallica. People are defending the choice, they're people coming to Metallica's defense. Metallica has a very wide following. Anyway, I can't help you, Shelley, because it really is the negation of everything Rand thinks about what it means to be, to be without values. What does that mean? So can do it. Yeah, somebody should have me review a Bob Dylan song. I'd enjoy that a lot more, I think, than Metallica. I like Bob Dylan. Andrew says, why do you think the author doesn't focus on faith? You said Hosea Lee also didn't address the faith aspect. It's as if they want something from religion other than the metaphysics, other than the mystical, or they are ashamed of accepting mysticism. Now, I think I suspect the author is an atheist, or at least not embracing of the particular form of faith that Christianity demands. Maybe he believes in something, right? Like so many people say, oh, there's something out there. And I think Ian Hosea Lee can't quite bring herself completely to believe in something, in a God, a Christian God, an afterlife, a Christian God that is judging you. I mean, Christianity is so confusing. I mean, even if you embrace Christianity, which Christianity do you embrace? Catholicism? And then if it's not Catholicism, then Protestantism, but which one? You become an Anglican? Giorgio McCluskey is an Anglican. Why an Anglican? You've got a thousand different sects. And she chose that one. She's been, she's dabbled with all of them. Not all of them, many of them. She chose Anglican. Why? Why would you choose, you know, what about Luther, and what about Calvin, and what about the Quakers, and what about... There's a million interpretations. Christianity in many respects has fragmented itself into almost nothingness in terms of doctrine. It's got faith in Jesus and God and altruism. That's Christianity today. What are the evangelicals actually to believe? And in what extent does that link to... Do they believe in eternity? Some do, some don't. I mean, Catholicism had a dogma, had a particular view, and Constantine understood. See, Christianity is tainted with power, with a power dynamic, which again doesn't come across a dominion. Constantine understood that if Christianity was going to become the religion of the Roman Empire, it had to be a thing. It had to be something solid. It had to have a dogma. You couldn't have all these people disagreeing about everything. You had to have a definitive statement about Jesus. Was He a God? Was He a human being? If He was a God, was He a God competing with a God-God? And if He's the Son of God, what is His relationship to God? If He's the Son, is He really a Son? How do you have a Son and a God? And isn't that dualism? Isn't that two gods? And what's the Holy Spirit? Is that a third God? And how does that integrate? And how does that turn... The biggest criticism, theological criticism, that Islam has against Christianity is that Christianity abandoned the belief in one God. Christianity really believes in three gods. And this was a problem in early Christianity, so they came up with this idea that it's three in one. It's one God, but it's also three different dimensions of that God, different expressions of that God. And they needed to be good Platonists to be able to hold that level of divorce from reality abstraction of a three in one. Catholicism was a dogma because it became a ruling ideology. See, up until Constantine, Christianity was just a minor sect and it splintered. And then Constantine brought it all together under one dogma. But people constantly rebelled against this dogma because the dogma didn't make sense. And the dogma was not consistent with what was written suddenly in the Old Testament, not consistent with the New Testament. So they constantly challenged this dogma and they constantly broke off. And the Catholic Church constantly had to go after them, kill them mostly in order to bring them in line, burn them at the stake as heretics, just wipe them out as they did with Christians who deviated from the mainstream over and over again. And they kept doing this. And there's a period in which, again, it becomes the Roman Empire, the Catholic Roman Empire from Charlemagne on for a while. You know, again, Catholicism became a religion of power. And there was a period there where it really was dominant and the Pope was dominant and they had rule. And then it all shattered with the Reformation. The Reformation was nothing new. It was all the objections that Christians had about the Catholic Church for 1500 years, 1400 years, all manifested itself suddenly in modern Luther. And it hit because of a particular social structure, power vacuum, a particular opportunity. printing press had a lot to do with it. The fact that it came after the Renaissance had a lot to do with it. And Christianity suddenly shattered into a thousand, again, a thousand different sects. And there was no body, there was no powerful entity that could unite them all. And once it shattered, once Protestantism basically said, it's all about you and God. It's all about the religion is all in your heart. There is no dogma. It's all in your heart. This is what Paul said originally, right? It's all here. So it's whatever. It's completely subjective in a sense. Religion is always subjective, but they made it explicit. And then you get a gazillion, you know, you get Baptists and Methodists and Calvinists and Quakers and this, then that, and, and evangelicals and a million different fragments because there's no dogma. And this is exactly why Constantine insistent on a dogma, a Christian dogma, a Catholic church. So what you have today is a Catholic church that's fragmenting, disintegrating. You know, you saw the Pope today or yesterday declare that it's okay to bless gay marriages, a huge deviation from his, from the dogma. And you've got, and then you've got a world in which there are 100 or maybe more different variations of Protestantism that can't agree on anything. Other than God and Jesus, some relationship there, they don't even agree on what that relationship is. You know, Jesus is generally son of God, but not exactly is he a God? Is he a man? Different sects hold it differently. Was he a man when he was on earth? Was he always a God? I mean, all of this is like debated, disagreed, right? But because Christianity is not associated with power, political power, it doesn't have to be a thing. It is interesting if you ever get a situation where Christianity is associated with political power, will it unify it? I mean, one of the, one of the things that I think bodes well for America in terms of a theocracy in the future is the degree to which American Christianity is fragmented and not a cohesive set of ideas. Notice that in Russia, where Putin can talk about religion constantly and inspires the state, which associated with power, whether the church and the state are hand in hand, there is one Christian church, one. That's it, right? So, Andrew, did I answer your question? I see my, I don't think they're ashamed of mysticism. I don't think they're all mystical. And maybe they are a little bit, but they view, they want to view at least Christianity primarily cultural. And again, they want to associate with Western civilization. All right, Shazbad, now you're talking, right? Now Shazbad has elevated himself. I mean, this is, this is, Shazbad has actually paid me to review more movies and songs than anybody. So he has been a massive supporter of the show. But he just added $100 and replaced Metallica with, and this is going to be so much fun, Blackadder's Christmas Carol. So yes, my wife and I are going to watch Blackadder's Christmas Carol. We'll probably do it this weekend when my son is here. It's fantastic. I love it. I haven't seen it in a long time. It's perfect for Christmas. And it's one of the funniest, best things. And Blackadder is one of the greatest, best comedies ever, right? Blackadder, the TV series. Four seasons, each season set in a different century in British history. I can't remember the Christmas Carol. There's, of course, the Christmas Carol set in the 19th century. There's one other, the third season of Blackadder is also in the 19th century. And Blackadder is one of the most brilliant, I think, best TV shows ever made comedy. And it's hilarious. It is so, it's so funny from the, yeah. I mean, first season is in the Middle Ages. The second season is in the time of Queen Elizabeth. So the Renaissance really. The third season is the 19th century. There's one of the greatest episodes ever is an episode about the dictionary, the writing of the first, of the Webster dictionary. And there is, and then the fourth season, which is the darkest, and is the least funny but very, very powerful, very powerful, is set in the trenches of World War One. Really good. Yes, Mr. Bean is the star. Mr. Bean is the star and House, what's his name? Hugh Laurie has a role in it in all four seasons. So it's basically Mr. Bean, who's the actor? God, his name is just, skip my mind. The actor who is Mr. Bean and Hugh Laurie, Mr. House, they, Warren Atkinson and Hugh Laurie are in all four seasons. And together with a couple of other kind of standard character actors. And really, really good. Stephen Fry appears in it. Yeah. It's truly a great show. All right. On the Leroy says, I recall you saying months ago that one of the fewer deeming qualities of Christianity is its emphasis on the individual as opposed to the tribe. Can any credit be given for this being a baby step to the Enlightenment? Sure. But there are lots of baby steps in history. And every one of those baby steps, they're big. They're massive. So just because somebody took a baby step 500 years ago to give them credit for everything that's come from that baby step is a little much. I'm also, you know, I don't know that Christianity really is the origin of this emphasis on the individual. I'm suspicious of that idea. I ran held that idea, but I really, I really find it hard to really grapple with. I mean, I don't know why you can't see a wall of the individual as a moral agent in Judaism. It strikes me that you can. And many of the biblical stories are such that the individuals that come out of those stories are very much individuals, very much moral actors in the world, very much have agency, blame credit. I also think, and here I'll ultimately leave this to the Greek philosophy scholars. I mean, this idea that Greek philosophy doesn't have really any kind of focus on the individual. I just don't find that convincing. So I'm curious about whether that is true or not. And I'll leave that to people like Greg Salamieri and others to help better help get to the bottom of it. So I'm not convinced of this idea that the emphasis on the individual is unique to Christianity and really is the beginning of that idea in Western civilization. I mean, didn't Christianity get it to some extent at least from Judaism and from Greece? And isn't Greek philosophy also focused on the individual? And who is ultimately reasoning according to Aristotle? Anyway, I'm curious what, how an expert on Greek philosophy would address that. But that was Ren's view and in that sense, yeah, I mean, that would be the one positive contribution that Christianity has had. And is this view of the individual and maybe as a consequence of that, of some sense of human equality, which could then lead to activism against slavery and in a view. You know, on the other hand, I think that much of Christianity's objection to slavery and much of Christianity's objection to poverty and oppression has more to do with the fact that it was a religion that was born in poverty, in weakness. And it aspired to more than that and therefore needed, early Christians needed and the desire to be treated more as equal, but also were resigned to their lot, the meek shall inherit the earth, not the meek becoming middle class shall inherit the earth. So, yeah, I mean, these are all tricky, tricky ideas in terms of how exactly they relate to one another. But I'm curious about the Greek philosophers, what they have to say about the individual. Andrew, Rand's analysis of the Pope's encyclical on birth control comes to mind we contrasting objectives with Christianity. Well, the church disapproved of the joy of sex qua joy for Rand, the joy is the purpose. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And that runs through Christianity pleasure is renounced. But when the enlightenment embraces pleasure, somebody like, you know, like the author of Dominion, Tom Holland, will say, well, that's just the application of this in Christianity. When it's not it really is a revolution. It really is something new. It really is something different. Nevertheless, while the solitary effect of crucifixion on those who might otherwise threaten the order of the state was taken for... I pressed on an audio thing of Tom Holland reading his book. All right. I'm not sure that was Tom, but I think it's Tom Holland reading his book. Adam, not as influential as the others on your economist list from earlier today, but Walter Williams was a great, was a great communicator of free market principles. Yes, he was. He's a great thinker and a great communicator and a great economist. Yeah, Walter Williams was really, really, really good on many, many things. I actually got to meet him. He's the only one of those people that actually got to meet actually had dinner with him years ago in Philadelphia. Some mutual friends that organized it. And so that was fun. I like Walter Williams and I enjoyed meeting him. He was a really funny guy. He had a great sense of humor. Ed Kalinsky asks, have you read Israel as Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth by Nat Tishby? I learned a good bit from it. If you read it, what do you think? I've not read it. Sorry. But I'm glad you learned something from it. And yeah, I mean, I think there are quite a few good books out there about Israel that I have not read. By the way, there are a lot of economists not on that list. I just took the list from... Somebody asked me to do the poll and he gave me the list and I just took it verbatim. Action Jackson wants to give another shout out to Emma Cox K-O-K, K-O-K performance of Voila with Andre Riu. And I will watch it. Just give me time. Does the book mention the Puritans from Salem, Massachusetts? It mentions them. It doesn't mention... It mentions them. I think now maybe I'm confusing books now. I think it mentions it. Anyway, it doesn't mention the witch hunts. It doesn't mention their communism. Again, it's selective in how it presents idea. It does it mention... I'm not sure it does. Maybe it doesn't. I'm looking at this. No, it doesn't mention the Puritans in Salem. That's a different book I was reading. So no. I mean, it has to be selective. It can't mention everything. But it doesn't mention them. But of course, that's another example of Christians thinking that the ideal is some form of communism, as they do over and over and over again in history. So this idea that Christianity equals capitalism is just bizarre. It's external ideas, external influences, enlightenment influences on Christianity that bring about that. But they're external influences. People who are coming up with ideas that are not originating in Christianity. And Tom Holland cannot separate that. Speaking of bell, I'll allow you on the Colorado Supreme Court kick Trump off the ballot for violating the Constitution should more states follow. You know, I'm not a constitutional scholar. I don't know if they technically can... If he is found guilty of this addition of working against the Constitution, then yes, then he's in violation of Constitution and he cannot run for president. Maybe it's not just addition. I can't tell you what the term is. But does it require conviction or just being accused of it, which he is being accused of it, in order for the Constitution to bar him? He's clearly not going to be barred in red states. Insurrection. Thank you. Insurrection. He's clearly not going to be barred in red states. Since it's an electoral college system, he could be barred from every blue state and still win the presidency. So, well, depends how you define blue states, but solidly blue state and still win the presidency. So I don't think it matters. It's just going to fragment the country. What is going to be interesting is that this will go to Supreme Court, I assume. And if it goes to Supreme Court, how they will, because if they will, that he is barred by the Constitution from running for president, then he is barred by the Constitution from running for president. And he has to be taken off the ballot in every single state. God, I mean, who knows what happens then in the country? Who knows how his supporters react? And, you know, I will obviously, you know, it's not the way I want him to go. I want him to be, you know, it's not the way I want Trump to not be president, but a world result in him not being president. I don't think you'll see a civil war. I don't believe a civil war is a realistic option for anything. I've said this for years. I don't think there's going to be a civil war, no matter what. In any time soon. But there could be a lot of violence. And it's not clear if this, I guess it doesn't result in a constitutional crisis because there's nobody to, there's nobody theoretically to challenge the Supreme Court. But it is going to be interesting. It's going to be interesting to watch what the Supreme Court does. It's going to have a, the Supreme Court is going to have a bunch of decisions to make between now and the election. They're going to have a profound impact on that election. They've got the Trump case about whether he is immune or not. They've got one of the Trump crates that I can't remember right now, and they've got this, they probably got this case. So it's going to be interesting. Anyway, I'll probably talk about it in the morning show, but I know at least one other Supreme Court has rejected it. I think in Michigan where it was proposed to kick him off the ballot, it's been rejected. So I don't expect it just to become commonplace and certainly not in the red states. And again, what really matters is what the Supreme Court decides. Fendharpa says, if you've read both Frankenstein and Dracula, which do you enjoy more? Also, on your year in review show, can you comment in Ingenuism's audience numbers? That's my second favorite Iran book show. I mean, Ingenuism audience numbers are very small. I can tell you now, it's, we haven't done much marketing. It doesn't have a built-in audience. And I haven't really cross-pollinated it much with Iran book show. I need to do more of that. I think next year I'll spend more time marketing the Ingenuism show. I'm glad you like it. But the numbers are small. In terms of Dracula and Frankenstein, I mean, I think I prefer the Frankenstein story. It's a more interesting story. It's a story about science, a story about progress. Dracula is just a monster. Frankenstein is a human creation. It's a warning against technology, potentially. It is, you know, so I think Frankenstein is the much better story and the much more interesting story. And the much more relevant story from modern times was Shelly wrote it. And it has real implications, whereas I can't really see the implications of Dracula. I don't see how Dracula is that interesting. All right. Thanks everybody. Thanks to all the superchats. Particularly thanks to Schaasbott, who contributed more than half of the support today. So for the review of Black Addis Christmas Carol. So that is fantastic. Thank you, Schaasbott. Dracula is very pro-human rationality. Yeah. I mean, there's a sense in which, you know, Frankenstein is too in the sense of the ability to create this creature, the irrationality of the townspeople, the panic and fear that leads to horrific consequences. Yeah. But I'm not great on bloodsucking monsters, I guess. All right. So thank you again. We'll be on again tomorrow for two shows in the morning. And then I'll be interviewing Jonathan Honing about loving pets in the evening. So all you pet lovers, I hope you'd join us for that one. Thanks everybody. I will see you tomorrow. Bye. Have a great night.