 And the energy that we should be devoted should be devoted on the foundations of freedom. Freedom is very, very rare in human history, very rare. Even the limited freedom and the declining freedom we have today, we're freer today than almost at any time in human history. And 99% of human history, we are being unfree—it's only less 250 years since the Enlightenment—that this idea of freedom even exists. It's a rare phenomenon that happens very infrequently and can be stomped out relatively easily. Well, we should be devoting our energies, our efforts, is to educating people about freedom, about its value, about where it comes from, and the ideas that are necessary to maintain it. So I want to say a little bit about what we should be focusing on rather than the constant barrage of passionate, endless politics and political debate and discussion and fights and arguments. What are the ideas that freedom rests on? And how do we get those ideas out there into the culture? How do we educate people about the ideas? Freedom is not in the hearts of all men, as George Bush once said. Freedom is not self-evident to people, as I think many libertarians think. Freedom is a massive achievement. The idea of freedom is a massive achievement, and then the implementation of freedom is an achievement on top of an achievement. And we should use the fact that we still have some freedom in the world in which we have today to advocate for it, to educate people about it. Freedom rests on deep philosophical ideas. I think there are two that are fundamental, that in a sense were discovered during the Enlightenment and have led to where we are today, that we need to resurrect, reinforce, fight for, argue for, debate for, and dedicate our energies towards. The first idea, and maybe in a sense the most important idea, is that men are capable of knowing the world around them. That reason is a tool of knowledge, of cognition, that we can know the world, we can understand it. That understanding does not come from revelation. That understanding does not come from philosopher kings. That knowledge is not ingrained in our genes, in our DNA. That knowledge is an achievement, but an achievement available to every human being. Every human being has the capacity to reason and therefore has the capacity to know the world. Because think about when that idea does not exist. If you believe that knowledge is achieved through some kind of revelation, but it turns out always that not everybody has the ability to get the revelation. We need philosopher kings or popes or leaders to tell us what the truth is, how we should live our lives. As individuals, we are told we are impotent. You don't know anything. You don't know the truth. That's just your subjective feelings. We're told constantly. Well, who said that you're right or that idea is right? There's a rejection of evidence, a rejection of reason, a rejection of fact, because they believe truth comes from another dimension. Truth is only available to experts. Truth is only available to those who are uniquely qualified to discover it. Well, if truth is only available to them, then they must guide us. They must lead us. They must tell us what to do. And they're eager. They are eager to jump at the opportunity to do exactly that, to control us and to impose their values, their will on all of us. And many people accept it and many people accept it because they don't believe their own mind. They don't believe their ability to discover reason, to study, to discover truth for themselves. And then there's a whole class of people who tell us that what you know is in your DNA. Everything is in your DNA. Everything is determined by your genes. Your effort makes nothing. Well, then what is truth? What our DNA tells us or what their DNA tells us? Truth is out the window. Truth doesn't exist. Truth is impossible to discover. You either know it or you don't know it. Your effort, your thinking, your reasoning makes no difference. We hear this from intellectuals constantly, that you're just a product of your DNA. You're just a product of evolution. You're just a product. And again, you don't know what the truth is. All these theories basically undermine your ability as an individual to have confidence in your ability to live, to know, to discover truth and to live by that truth. She left impotent. And there's no accident that in an environment in which we are told constantly that you cannot discover truth because either it's revealed to some or it's in your genes. And if you don't know it, you just don't know it. We see a rise in tribalism. We see a rise in cynicism, skepticism. We see a rise in dramatic rise in emotionalism and a rush to tribalism and a search for a leader to tell us what to do. People need guidance. They need some principles to guide their life. And if they can't discover those principles for themselves, then they will ask somebody else to guide their life for them. Always be in the case in human history. To get to freedom, we must first advocate for reason. We must first teach people that they do have access to truth. I mean, they know this at some level. They know this in their professional life. They know this at work, but they need to know it in a deeper sense. They need to know it. That reason applies to all knowledge, not just the engineering that they do or whatever their profession is, but in every aspect of their life, in every aspect where knowledge is required. We need to denounce the idea that they're just products of their DNA. No, knowledge requires effort. It requires focus. It requires you committing yourself to truth, to discovery. So people need to understand that they have the means to live, to live well, to achieve their happiness, to discover their values. So one, they have to know they can do it. They have the capacity to reason and they can live and they can survive and they can thrive and they can flourish. Second, we have to convince them. We have to teach them. We have to explain to them that their life is worthy. That the purpose of their life should be their life, should be their own survival, their own success, their own flourishing and ultimately their own happiness. That they are, that they're morality, that they're more code, that it's taught them for generations after generation after generation, that the purpose in life is to serve others, to serve God, to serve the community, to serve the needy, to serve their fellow man. That that idea is wrong. Indeed, that idea is evil. Their purpose in life is to live, to live the best life that they can live. They have the tool to do it, their reason. And they need the moral confidence to actually engage their reason in pursuit of their own happiness. So the two fundamental ideas at the heart of the battle for freedom are not Biden versus Trump or politics or left versus right or any of that. It is the two fundamental ideas, a reason, the fact that we can guide our lives and individualism, the fact that it's right for us to guide our lives towards success and happiness. That's where the battle is. It's epistemological in a sense of convincing people they have the tool and it's ethical in a sense of convincing people that they should live for themselves. And that is ultimately the spectrum, if you will, the meaningful spectrum politically. It's one side all the different people who think you cannot think for yourself. You cannot discover the truth for yourself. You cannot actually live guided by your own mind pursuing your own values because you don't have the capacity. To discover those ideas, those principles, those values. So all the mystics on one side. And on the other side is reason. Other people believe that you have the tool to discover truth, that you have the tool to make choices for your own life. That's the spectrum and then the people in between that think oh some truths you can discover and some stuff and do reason is sometimes good but not always. So you need that spectrum. That's the spectrum that is meaningful. Mystics, reason based. And if you think about mystics, you can see it on the left and on the right today. Well, the right has religious conservatives and religious, you know, people of all kinds, including, you know, President Trump, who I think has a really bad case of primacy of consciousness, which is a form of mysticism ultimately, attachment from reality. And then on the left, the mystics, the mysticism and environmentalism, the complete irrationality and mysticism of the anti-racist, the so-called anti-racist of critical race theory, and you can go postmodernism and all that irrationality on one side rationality on the other side. That is a meaningful spectrum. It's not left and right. Irrationality, rationality. We are on the rational side. We need a fight for the rational side. The second spectrum is individualism on the one side and collectivism on the other. Who does your life belong to? What is your moral responsibility, your own happiness, a sacrifice to everybody else? That's a spectrum. Individualism on one side, collectivism on the other side. That is a spectrum worth fighting for, fighting for the side of individualism. Now, of course, politics matters because politicians have an immense impact on our lives. We should care about politics because of that. It determines the scope of our freedom. But think about it. Collectivists and mystics are never going to be pro-freedom. Not fully, not really. They might be pro what seems like freedom for a while because it serves some other purpose. But collectivists and mystics are ultimately authoritarian. The more collectivists, the more mystic, the more authoritarian they are. The more they want to be told what to do. The more the leaders want to tell you what to do. So collectivism and mysticism are the path towards authoritarianism and the end of any kind of freedom we have. The leaders on power and control, the masses want to be told what to do. On the other hand, if somebody is an individualist and an advocate of reason, somebody who knows that rationality is the path to truth, then they trust their own mind. It doesn't mean when I say trust your own mind and discover the truth, it doesn't mean that every truth you have to in a first-handed way discover. It means that you have a tool to do it and you can then refer to experts and analyze what experts are saying or telling you, evaluate them. You have the tool to evaluate what the experts are telling you. I mean, we all go to doctors, we don't expect to know everything, but when I go to a doctor, I don't go to a doctor blindly. So we depend on people. So when people have reason and are confident, confident in their own ability to live a good life, to discover truth, to discover the values that are going to lead to their own happiness. And they believe that that's a worthy cause. People like that don't want mother government on their shoulder telling you what they can and cannot eat, what they can and cannot drink, what drugs they can and cannot take, when they can get a vaccine. They demand to be left alone. They demand their freedom. They demand their liberty. They demand to make decisions for themselves. People who respect reason and people who respect their own life and their own happiness will be free people because they will not tolerate anything else. So if we care about freedom, if we care about liberty, it is those ideas that we must fight for. The politics will take care of itself. The politics will resolve themselves. Now, so in my view, a focus should be on education. A focus should be on philosophy. A focus should be on ethics. A focus should be on undoing the damage that hundreds of years of bad ideas have done to the culture. What we have today is dependent on one short brief period of a more rational philosophy that was embraced in the Enlightenment. But philosophically, that is dead a long time ago. We're still living on the fumes, on the intellectual fumes of the Enlightenment. And so, has given us a philosophy, an integrated system that grounds the ideas, the better ideas of the Enlightenment, and solid footing with solid foundations. It provides us a proper moral defense of freedom, of capitalism, of individualism. A proper philosophical understanding of the world of reason in human life. We have no excuse today not to be fighting for freedom and philosophical ground. The tools are there. The tools have been granted to us in Atlas Shrugged, in the virtue of selfishness and capitalism not known ideal. In Ayn Rand's brilliant philosophical writings and her novels, there's so much work to be done. There's so much to be achieved. A future of real freedom, of real liberty is such a value, is so important. That is where we should be focusing our energy. That is where we should be focusing our time on writing, speaking, engaging, discussing, debating with people on these issues. Because once we can convince people of the power of reason and the importance of individualism, freedom, the politics will all take care of ourselves, and we will finally achieve kind of the world which we all desire, which we all want. So let's refocus that energy, that passion on what matters. Thank you all. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning, any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it, but at least the people who are liking it, you know, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So, you know, if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes. 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